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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




0001343S1S7 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 

ChapS?^^opyright No. 

Shelfj.jd.li.. 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



NOVELS AND TRAVEL 



BY 



;Pttram Coles ^ama< 



RUTLEDGE. i6mo, #1.25. 
THE SUTHERLANDS. i6mo, $1.25. 
FRANK WARRINGTON. i6mo,$i.25. 
ST. PHILIPS. i6mo, $1.25. 
RICHARD VANDERMARCK. i6mo, $1.25. 
A PERFECT ADONIS. i6mo, $1.25. 
HAPPY-GO-LUCKY. i6mo, $1.25; paper, 50 cents. 
PHOEBE. i6mo, $1.25. 
MISSY. i6mo, $1.25. 
AN UTTER FAILURE. i6mo, $1.25. 
LOUIE'S LAST TERM AT ST. MARY'S. i6mo, $1.00. 
A CORNER OF SPAIN. i6mo. 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 

Publishers, 
Boston and New York. 



898 



A CORNER OF 
SPAIN 



BY 



MIRIAM COLES HARRIS 

AUTHOR OF " RUTLEDGE," ETC. 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

<®bz ftitartf&e i|Sre?& Cambridge 

MDCCCXCVIII 



77?0 

COPYRIGHT, 1898, BY MIRIAM COLES HARRIS 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



«£&S 




0PI£S RECEIVED. 






n 1e C 93r y (6243O0C1 241898 



981 



s 



CONTENTS 



CHAP. 


I. 


EN ROUTE 


II. 


GIBRALTAR 


III. 


FROM ALGECIRAS TO MALAGA . 


IV. 


MALAGA 


V. 


LIFE IN A CONVENT .... 


VI. 


THE OLD FORTRESS . . . . 


VII. 


IN THE CONVENT GARDEN 


VIII. 


A SPANISH CURE 


IX. 


SPANISH LIMITATIONS 


X. 


A MIGRATING FAMILY . 


XI. 


IN THE MALAGA MOUNTAINS . 


XII. 


BEHIND THE SCENES IN THE MALAGA 




BULL RING 


XIII. 


A SPANISH MILK-ROUTE . 


XIV. 


BLOOD POWER 


XV. 


AN ANDALUSIAN COOK 


XVI. 


MALAGA'S BISHOP 


XVII. 


Malaga's manners .... 


KVIIL 


MATINAL 


XIX. 


IN THE SEVILLE BULL RING . 


XX. 


AT THE SEVILLE FAIR . 



PAGE 



10 
20 
32 

45 
52 
58 
66 
72 
80 
87 



"3 
123 

127 
131 

139 
149 

158 

165 

183 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 



EN ROUTE 



A tropical Christmas on Long Island, 
and a New Year's day in New York that 
might have passed muster for a Florida 
May-day, had only whetted our thirst for 
a Southern winter. This could not last 
long ; such weather was unseasonable ; 
we wanted to go where it was seasonable. 
A trip in Southern waters ; warm weather 
the second day out ; no fogs, no Banks 
to pass, none of the terrors of the North 
Atlantic, — that was our happy pro- 
gramme. 

We sailed out of the harbor on a balmy 
morning, strains of music and scent of 

i 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

flowers filling the air. The Kaiser is a 
fine ship, the cabins are full of appliances 
for comfort, enough furniture for an ordi- 
nary sleeping-room, and as much free 
space for moving about as in an average 
New York drawing-room. We sat down 
to our first meal with a buoyant feeling 
that we had made a wise choice in taking 
the Mediterranean route; our fellow- 
voyagers' faces expressed the same happy 
conviction. 

Alas, before nightfall, we saw it all 
d'un autre ceil. To be brief, "the North 
Pole wasn't in it," as our jaundiced 
Western neighbor at table said. " Give 
me the North Atlantic every time. Give 
me Banks, fogs, icebergs. I know all 
about 'em, and I have n't expected any- 
thing else, but deliver me from ' trips in 
Southern waters' crusted with icicles, 
from ' warm weather the second day out ' 
that cuts like a knife, and from all such 
i tropical seas ' as these ! " 

For six dreadful days, no one, not even 
2 



EN ROUTE 

the embittered Westerner, left his berth ; 
in all the abject misery of prolonged 
seasickness there was plenty of time to 
ask, Had the decision to leave home been 
such a wise one ? In the dead unhappy 
night the great waves broke on the deck 
over the cabin with the roar of artillery. 
With nerves grown wild listening to the 
racing of the screw, your imagination was 
not above dwelling upon possibilities of 
all kinds. Might there not be a secret 
bit of mechanism hidden by anarchist 
fiends in some innocuous-looking bale of 
merchandise in the hold, ticking its way 
out, till it struck the ship's hour of doom ? 
Might there not be some low-lying derelict 
stealthily coming towards us under cover 
of the inky blackness, to stab our good 
Kaiser under the fifth rib like another 
Joab and send us to the bottom ? Put- 
ting derelicts and dynamite and home- 
sickness out of the question, we were 
paying a high price for the subtle plea- 
sure of foreign travel and its mental 

3 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

stimulus. The abandoned squalor and in- 
delicacy of a seasick cabin; the crash- 
ing of crockery; the rolling about of 
steamer-trunks, valises, medicine-chests; 
the discomfort of unmade berths, and 
sore and bruised limbs ; the horror of 
cold scraps of food swallowed without 
lifting the head; a dominant sense of 
degradation and disorder, — all this had 
to be paid for the coveted enlargement 
of experience, for gratifying the lust of 
change, for the sweetness of going where 
by nature and Providence we did not seem 
intended to go. 

Six, nearly seven days of this, and then 
the storm abated and the sea went down. 
Sick and wretched beings crawled on 
deck into the brilliant sunshine ; the deck 
stewards began their belated reign ; 
steamer-chairs and rugs became matters 
of interest. Late on Friday we passed 
in and out among the ravishing Azores, 
not near enough "to see the whites of our 
enemy's eyes/' but quite close enough to 

4 



EN ROUTE 

admire the whiteness of his pretty houses, 
and the picturesqueness of his mountain 
roads, and to hear the roar of the great 
surf that beat upon his rocky sides. 

By this time the air was balmy, and 
from that on, " Southern waters " were no 
fiction. People walked about the broad 
decks without wraps and without hats in 
the equally exquisite sunlight and moon- 
light. We dined on deck, and lay in our 
steamer-chairs till all hours at night. 
Every day some new " stowaway " crept 
up and looked about; there was good 
music, there were pretty children, there 
were queer people to look at, and even 
pleasant ones to talk to. The jolly cap- 
tain rolled about and chaffed everybody. 
It was the very poetry of sea-going : never 
such stars, never such soft life-giving 
winds ; what one ate and drank was nec- 
tar and ambrosia, and one had the appetite 
of childhood to eat and drink it with. 
But it was not the second day out, as the 
prospectus said, and it was on the tenth 

5 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

and not the eighth day that we sighted 
Spain. We had lost all that by the 
storm. 

The first land we saw was the yellow 
Spanish coast, and then the African 
mountains loomed up on the other hand, 
and we found ourselves drawing towards 
the far-famed Straits. It was a pictur- 
esque entree into the Old World. The 
all -golden afternoon had not begun to 
wane as we passed through them, the 
great headlands of the African mountains 
rising on our right, and the low Spanish 
coast lying on our left, the sea as blue as 
the heavens and as smooth. Up on the 
bridge the captain had pointed out to us 
Trafalgar, then Tarifa, and on the other 
side Tangier and the Fez wildernesses, 
whose ranges of low hills the declining 
sun told off one by one in graduated haze. 
Our huge ship moved steadily on, its 
decks swarming with a holiday crowd, gay 
and eager. We began to wonder, like the 
French maid who wished she could be on 

6 



EN ROUTE 

the sidewalk and see herself ride by in 
the carriage, if we were not as interesting 
to the shore as the shore was to us. 
Everything became a little histrionic ; the 
rapture of the crowd as the Rock of Gi- 
braltar hove in sight was exaggerated, the 
singing of the men raising and then 
dropping the great anchor seemed done 
for effect ; everything was so out of the 
commonplace that we doubted it. 

Just at this point we were called down 
to dinner, a meal of supererogation for 
those who were to land at Gibraltar; 
and when we came up from it, the even- 
ing light shone upon the picturesque town 
climbing up the base of the Rock which 
was towering over our heads, and palm- 
trees, and stucco houses, and Moorish 
towers and stone ramparts mixed them- 
selves up confusedly. The crazy little 
steam-launch had come out to us ; the 
water was black with small boats ; men 
with Moorish things to sell, and boatmen, 
and couriers, climbed up the side of the 

7 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

ship and boarded her. It was a precious 
melee. Then in the midst of it all, we 
had to collect our wits and to pay our 
fees. 

The matter of fees is enough to take the 
romance out of a troubadour. It is a thing 
you cannot be forehanded about, even if 
you mean to be free-handed. It is a 
traveler's axiom never to fee your servant 
till you need no more service from him, 
as gratitude is a sense of favors to come. 
In the thickening twilight, therefore, we 
had to dispense the strange coin of which 
we had scarcely yet mastered the values, 
and gold and silver were of one com- 
plexion in the dimness. 

If the Teutons of the Kaiser were not 
satisfied, they did not tell us, and we left 
them with a brief feeling of duty done, 
only to fall into other complications be- 
fore we reached the shore. Every one 
who touched our luggage felt he had a 
claim upon us ; by the time we were half 
across the great stone quay at Gibraltar, 

8 



EN ROUTE 

now bathed in moonlight, we were hope- 
lessly compromised with three porters, 
two boatmen, and a courier from the 
Royal Hotel. It was all very distressing, 
but we were on dry land again, derelicts 
and dynamite were fears of the past, and 
the lights, the sentinels, the massive 
gateways, the narrow winding streets 
told us the dry land was the Rock of 
Gibraltar, and we were where we had 
never been before; a thing of itself to 
promise happiness. 

9 



II 

GIBRALTAR 

It is always wise to know some one 
who is at home in the place to which you 
go, even for a week. We had occasion, 
while we were at Gibraltar, to bless the 
friend who warned the American Consul 
of our coming, and asked him to look 
after us. By his grace we were delivered 
from the miseries of the Royal Hotel, 
which is as bad as the best hotel in a 
civilized city can well be. It seemed 
superficially clean, but a pervading smell 
of carbolic roused all sorts of suspicions 
in the mind. The bread was sour, the 
butter beyond belief ; and whatever vir- 
tue the rest of the food had was neutral- 
ized by the fact that you could not get 
it, for there was absolutely no service. 

IO 



GIBRALTAR 

Therefore when we found ourselves in- 
stalled in fine large rooms, the great win- 
dows of which commanded a sight of two 
continents, and all Gibraltar and its bay 
to boot, and in a house immaculately 
clean, and where the food was thoroughly 
English and good, the service fair, and 
the price one third less than that of the 
hotel, we added to our tourist's credo an 
article expressing faith in the virtue of 
knowing some one who knows more than 
you do of the place you go to. Wheatley 
Terrace is the name of these long estab- 
lished lodgings, and seems as well known 
at the post office and shops as that of 
any hotel. 

Gibraltar not being Spain, nor yet geo- 
graphically England, one feels a certain 
bewilderment in straying about in streets 
bearing all sorts of English names, and 
swarming with all sorts of foreign people. 
Parcels Post brings you parcels delivered 
by a Spaniard who does not speak Eng- 
lish ; in the Moorish market you cannot 

ii 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

even buy an egg in your mother tongue, 
and you may as well give up finding your 
way about if you do not speak Spanish. 
Turbaned Moors, cut-throat looking Span- 
iards, Jews, Greeks, sunburned sailors of 
all the nations of Europe, mingle with 
British soldiers and American tourists in 
the narrow streets. English women driv- 
ing jaunty cobs, officers riding well-bred 
horses, artillery wagons, peasant funerals, 
donkeys staggering under heavy loads, 
mules with gay trappings, all jostle each 
other in the steep winding ways of this 
unique town, which is as picturesque as 
Italy and as clean as England, as old as 
Helen of Troy, and as smart as a French 
provincial city. Above you towers the 
Rock, gray and green, direct into the 
sky ; below you is a sea of roofs diversi- 
fied with palm-trees and gardens, and 
beyond spreads the blue bay dotted with 
sails, and across it the hills of Spain. You 
point in one direction and some one says 
airily, " Oh, that 's Africa," and in another, 

12 



GIBRALTAR 

" That ? Why, that 's the Mediterranean, 
don't you know," and observe casually of 
another blue strip that there goes the 
Atlantic. It mixes one up. Here is a 
seven-miles bit of Great Britain, from 
which you could throw a biscuit into 
Spain and a bomb into Africa, and where 
you have to put English stamps on your 
letters and can eat oatmeal "to your 
breakfast/ ' 

It always seems a trifle dramatic on 
England's part to keep up Gibraltar at 
an expense of a million of dollars and 
more a year for the simple wages and 
subsistence of its five thousand men in 
uniform. Heaven knows what she spends 
annually on repairs and material and that 
sort of thing. (She has already sunk 
more than fifty millions sterling on the 
"plant.") It is like one of those great 
English estates where the lordly owner 
does not spend a fortnight a year, but 
where everything is kept up as though 
he were coming to-morrow. He can ill 

13 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

afford to do it, but neither can he afford 
to forego the prestige. 

To be sure, Gibraltar is the lock of the 
Mediterranean, and John Bull has the key- 
in his pocket. He likes to feel that, and 
to rattle it around with some other im- 
aginary keys and titles which he keeps 
there. He thinks that rattle awes the 
nations ; he has some old-fashioned ideas 
about human nature ; he has not quite as- 
similated its complex character. We are 
of a younger generation of actors; we 
know the day of playing to the gallery is 
past. 

Apropos of galleries, those of Gibral- 
tar are the great sight ; there is where a 
good deal of the fifty millions sterling has 
gone. The vast Rock is honeycombed 
with them, modern catacombs, but spick 
and span, and devoid of dead men's bones. 
The views from the embrasures are mag- 
nificent, the order and perfection of every- 
thing complete. It is all point device, 
from the guns up to the gunners, but 

14 



GIBRALTAR 

you never get over the feeling that it is 
a show place, and nobody will ever live in 
it, and it had better be given up before 
the family are quite beggared. 

A charming afternoon drive is through 
the Alameda to Europa Point. The Ala- 
meda is a beautiful endless garden, full of 
palm and orange and eucalyptus and all 
sorts of trees you are not likely to know, 
and all sorts of flowers that you are, but 
these last so exaggerated as to stagger 
you, "growed out o' knowledge ; " a heli- 
otrope hedge eight feet high, geraniums 
the size of scrub-oaks, arbutilum waving 
their coral bells high in the air above you. 
The road to Europa Point winds in and 
out among barracks and government 
buildings and officers' quarters, all in 
perfect order, amid delicious verdure, 
and all commanding beautiful views of 
the sea. One would think it the very 
poetry of " soldiering " to be stationed 
here, within four days of London, and 
yet in a climate where the sunshine seems 

is 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

eternal and the flowers bloom all the year, 
and where there is so little to do. But in 
point of fact the officers loath it, and with 
the men it is equally unpopular. Better 
fifty years of England than a cycle of 
Gibraltar. Socially Gibraltar . does not 
equal Malta and some other garrison 
towns. The crack regiments are not 
sent here, I am told, and the flavor of 
life is insipid in consequence. The Hunt- 
ing Club has good sport, and there are 
capital covers. The meets, of course, are 
all in Spain, some of them very distant. 
One includes crossing the bay to Alge- 
ciras and "training " nearly an hour, but 
once there, the sport is said to be excel- 
lent. The nearer meets are across the 
Spanish lines beyond the cork woods ; the 
last one while we were there was sixteen 
miles off, a tiresome distance in that warm 
climate. There are tennis, and badmin- 
ton, and polo, and cricket, and rowing 
clubs, and two or three theatres ; the 
Garrison Library, in its beautiful garden, 

16 



GIBRALTAR 

is delightful ; the governor has to give 
two balls a year, bongri malgre ; there 
are subscription dances, and masquerades, 
and dinners, and teas ad nauseam. But 
Gibraltar, sunny, picturesque, historic, — 
this magnificent monument of national 
resource, this museum of military device, 
this grand work of supererogation above 
and beyond all the requirements to which 
it can possibly be put, — is a beastly bore, 
a dismal hole, to the officers stationed here 
in it. But perhaps it is only their faqon 
de parley ?■ 

The British lion seems to have laid his 
paw heavily on the Gibraltar cabman, who 



1 It must be admitted the soft climate is enervating, far 
more so than any part of Spain we saw ; there is something 
in its situation under the Rock which makes the air insup- 
portably warm and stagnant. The other side of the Rock, 
Europa Point, seems fresh and invigorating by comparison, 
and Tangier, swept by strong ocean winds, is delicious even 
in midsummer. A second visit in the early spring increased 
this impression of Gibraltar, and one often heard casual 
allusions to " a touch of Rock fever," among the officers' 
families. None of them are very well or very happy there, 
and the wish of every one seems to be to get away. 

17 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

is inevitably a Spaniard. He is the only 
cabman in Europe who can be imposed 
upon. He never asks a pour-boire, and 
if you give him less than his due through 
ignorance of Spanish money or language, 
or of the code governing drivers of hack- 
ney carriages which H. B. M. has pasted 
up in his poor little vehicle, he rarely re- 
monstrates, but looks plaintively down at 
the insufficient coin in his palm, and al- 
most imperceptibly shakes his head. Two 
pesetas an hour is what he is entitled to 
receive for driving two people up the face 
of that stupendous rock. On even the 
gentlest declivities, seen at a little dis- 
tance, the horse looks like a fly crawling 
up a pane of glass. When you pay the 
man eighty cents for a drive of two hours 
you feel it is blood-money, and that you 
have certainly taken a year out of his 
horse's life. The road to Europa Point 
is no exception to this rule. The latter 
part of it is indeed precipitous. The views 
are beyond description beautiful as you 

18 



GIBRALTAR 

round the Point and climb up the Rock 
to the governor's cottage. Awhile after 
passing this, which in its shut-up condi- 
tion looks a cross between a bowling alley 
and a bathing-house, the cabman stops. 
He draws the line here, or perhaps 
H. B. M. draws it, and the rest of the 
climbing must be a personal matter. A 
sunny afternoon on this sheer height is 
most sweet and still ; leagues and leagues 
of blue Mediterranean stretch out to the 
horizon ; you see the faint outline of the 
African mountains, the purple of the 
nearer Spanish Sierras ; the gray Rock 
above mounts, as always, straight into the 
sky. You do not wonder so much that 
England does not want to give up Gi- 
braltar. 

l 9 



Ill 

FROM ALGECIRAS TO MALAGA 

It is foolhardy to travel in a country 
where you know nothing of the language ; 
and we had fool's luck on our first day's 
journey in Spain. The day before we had 
gone out to look for a Cook's office in Gi- 
braltar in which to buy our tickets. For- 
tunately one had been opened there within 
two weeks. It was very spic-and-span, and 
a pompous little Spaniard with white teeth 
told us he was sure travel in Spain would 
rapidly increase now that it was known 
there was a Cook's office in Gibraltar. 
I said I supposed they were established 
in all the principal cities. He confessed 
that Gibraltar and Madrid were the only 
places as yet blessed by this source of 
sweetness and light. This was bad news, 

20 



FROM ALGECIRAS TO MALAGA 

for there is worry avoided in buying your 
tickets from an English-speaking person, 
and in being able to ask questions about 
the route with a reasonable prospect of 
understanding the answers. The process 
of buying a railway ticket at a Spanish . 
station is scarcely less complicated than 
that of buying a house and lot at home. 
The morning we left Gibraltar, we got to 
the ticket office half an hour before the 
boat was to start, having our tickets 
already in our pockets ; and notwithstand- 
ing, we were in grave danger of being left. 
Cook's agent was waiting for us, in a fine 
new uniform which included a baton. He 
marshaled us up to the desk where we 
were to show our tickets and to pay the 
extra weight on our trunks, which were 
left outside to be weighed. Three men, 
exclusive of little Cook and his baton, 
were engaged fifteen minutes in examining 
the already purchased tickets, in entering 
their numbers in a book, in marking and 
punching them, and in requiring our signa- 

21 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

tures and assents to something important, 
what of course we did not know. Outside, 
a mob was assisting at the weighing of the 
two trunks. The welkin rang with their 
loud acclaim. What that was all about 
we did not know then, nor do we know 
now. After a long delay, the result of 
the weighing was announced ; there was 
more Spanish discussion and gesticula- 
tion, and then Cook's little man came and 
told me there was two dollars to pay, and 
I paid it. Leastways, I gave him an Eng- 
lish sovereign out of which to pay it. Then 
ensued the wildest uproar of all. All four 
men brandished their arms about and 
talked as if some one's life were in danger. 
I felt I had a right to know whose, and 
considered that as I was paying a dollar 
for the English of Cook's man, I was 
entitled to ask him. He explained to me 
with gentle courtesy and in very broken 
English, that the ticket agent did not 
know whether he was justified in chan- 
ging an English sovereign. " But," said 

22 



FROM ALGECIRAS TO MALAGA 

the little man with dignity, "I tell him, 
I take the response." 

The ticket agent finally went to a chest 
of drawers and, unlocking one, with re- 
luctance counted out the change. All 
this time the other men watched him, 
and talked a good deal. Then the little 
Cook took the money and counted it out 
to me, and I put it away in my purse, as 
he assured me it was all right. I am 
sure I hope it was. I had no means of 
judging. Our hand luggage meanwhile 
had been put into a rowboat to be taken 
out to the ferry-boat which runs across 
the bay to Algeciras, where we were to 
take the train. The rowboat proved to be 
consecrate to some other use, and a great 
clamor ensued as the things were all 
fished up out of it by two or three porters, 
and carried to another boat, and dropped 
down into it. Fortunately we were the 
only passengers registering that morning, 
or we should never have got off. 

Meantime it began to rain furiously ; the 
23 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

whole quay seemed under water in three 
minutes. So much time had been con- 
sumed, it seemed probable we should be 
left. But at last a boat was brought up 
to the wharf, and in a tropical deluge we 
went down some steps, and at a happy- 
lurch of the rocking skiff were shot on 
board by the boatmen. Our baggage was 
covered with an old sail, but several men 
were also sheltered under it, and all the 
place left for us was in the stern of the 
boat, with a pool of water on the narrow 
seat, and standing-room in a lake. I pre- 
ferred to stand. I have never been 
exposed to so heavy a rain, and after we 
got outside the mole, the waves were high. 
As one huge one sent us up on its crest, 
I thought I was going overboard, and 
caught the arm of a man standing beside 
me. When we got down off the watery 
mountain into a quieter bit of sea, I 
looked at the man whose arm I was still 
grasping. I am afraid, if I had seen him 
on dry land and under circumstances of 

24 



FROM ALGECIRAS TO MALAGA 

less peril, I should have thought he was 
a middle-aged brigand. But he was so 
touched by this mark of confidence that 
his expression was benign. He of course 
could not speak English, but he managed 
by gesture to assure me that there was 
no danger and that he would look after 
us, which he continued to do, with un- 
obtrusive kindness, all through the long 
day's journey. 

If England would spend some of the 
money she wastes on projectiles in build- 
ing a pier at Gibraltar, travelers would 
be spared the discomfort of this primitive 
ferry ; but I suppose she is not obliged to 
concern herself with travelers. It was 
anything but pleasant, in a pouring rain, 
to bob up and down beside the little 
steam tug, waiting for a favorable wave 
to precipitate us on board her ; and why 
our luggage was not spilled over into the 
sea, and soaked with salt as well as rain 
water, I do not know. It takes the tug 
half an hour to cross the bay. Our 

25 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

spirits were very low ; the custom-house 
lay before us, and Cook's man had left 
us. We were on a deep black sea of 
Spanish, not an English-speaking craft in 
sight. After we left the boat, one of its 
officials led us, like dumb driven cattle, to 
the custom-house. The whole male popu- 
lation of Algeciras assisted at the exami- 
nation of our trunks. They stood looking 
on with unblushing interest, as tray after 
tray was taken out and put back, and 
they seemed disappointed when our keys 
were restored to us. We were then 
waved forward to the train, which was 
waiting for us patiently. It would have 
had to wait a good while, if there had 
been three or four more passengers. We 
had a compartment to ourselves, and were 
very comfortable. As soon as we were 
sheltered from the rain, it stopped and 
the sun came out gloriously. Our wet 
clothes and recent discomforts were for- 
gotten in the delights of the journey. We 
had made provision for being tired and 

26 



FROM ALGECIRAS TO MALAGA 

for amusing ourselves, but from nine, when 
we left terraced and picturesque Alge- 
ciras, till twilight settled down over the 
land as we drew near Malaga, there was 
not a moment when we were willing to 
turn from the windows of the carriage 
and to forego the landscape. 

The road from Algeciras to Bobadilla 
had then been open only a year or so. It 
is an English enterprise, and must have 
been built in the interests of civilization 
alone, for I should think there was not 
traffic or travel enough to pay for it; 
the outlay must have been enormous. 
There is much tunneling and difficult 
grading ; but labor in Spain is cheap, and 
the cost of running the road cannot be 
great. Peasant women wave the flags 
at the crossings ; a small dinner-bell is 
tinkled at the station when the train is to 
resume its leisurely route after a leisurely 
pause. Very rarely the engine makes a 
faint piping little whistle. The guard takes 
off his hat when he comes into the car- 

27 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

riage to look at your ticket. It all seems 
child-like, and innocent, and sweet. The 
absence of rush and smoke, and shriek 
and cinder is Arcadian. The arrival of 
the train seems the event of the day at 
every station, and all the villagers are 
collected, as well as their dogs and don- 
keys, to gaze at it. Nobody appears to 
arrive or depart on it ; a very thin mail- 
bag is exchanged, and an occasional jug 
or basket would cover the sum of the in- 
voice of freight. 

The air grew cold as we ascended the 
mountains, and it was pitiful to see the 
blue peasants in their thin cotton clothes. 
But they evidently did not know they 
were cold and took no means to prevent 
it, such as stamping their feet or walking 
up and down in the sun, but stood about 
like sheep and looked at the train. They 
do not wear any costume, and save a gay 
handkerchief tied over the heads of the 
women, and a red scarf bound round the 
waists of the men, there is nothing to 

28 



FROM ALGECIRAS TO MALAGA 

distinguish them from the corresponding 
class in the American Far West or Far 
East. The very ill-fitting shoddy clothes 
of the men might have been made in 
Chatham Street, and the thin calico of 
the women's skirts been bought over the 
counter of any village store in New Eng- 
land. But they are picturesque for all 
that, with their swarthy skins and dark 
eyes ; and every group one sees is of 
interest, as is every inch of the road from 
Algeciras to Malaga. The first few miles 
out of Algeciras reminded us of the 
Roman Campagna ; if only an occasional 
peasant in sheepskin breeches and dan- 
gling coat and gay hat had been in sight, 
we might have believed we were looking 
our last across the plain upon the dome 
of St. Peter's rather than upon the Rock 
of Gibraltar. But Spain is very individual 
in its roughness and its grandeur, its rich- 
ness of vegetation, and its poverty of im- 
plement ; it is at once a brigand and a baby, 
a fanatic and a bull-fighter ; it is devout and 

29 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

dissolute, contemptible and magnificent, 
but it is always and inalienably Spain. 

The scenery along this new railway isi 
more continuously striking than almost 
any I remember. You go from one range 
of sierras to another ; you have scarcely 
subdued your raptures over one wild 
gorge than you come upon another cleft 
mountain and tumbling cascade which 
obliterates the first. Crags crowned with 
Moorish ruins, villages climbing up green 
hillsides, rugged mountains and sterile 
plains, paint each other out with rapid 
brush. Orchards of gray-green olives, and 
of pale pink almond blossoms, groves of 
eucalyptus, sentinels of cypress, palm, 
banana, and cork trees, — their f oreign- 
ness is fast growing familiar. The poor 
little huts, into whose bareness you can 
look through unglazed windows and open 
doors, pinch your heart with pity, while 
the upturned face of some sunburnt happy 
boy swells it with pleasure. Poverty could 
go no lower than the dark, damp, sodden 

30 



FROM ALGECIRAS TO MALAGA 

hut ; nature could strike a note no higher 
than the divine sun and sky and soil of 
Andalusia. 

The names of the stations slip past you 
almost unheeded. In a land where there 
is no Baedeker and only two Cooks, you 
must beat your own music out. Castel- 
lar, Ximena, Gaucin, Ronda, Teba, "put 
strange memories in your head " from 
Moorish wars and the Marquis of Cadiz, 
down to the days of Sedan and poor 
Eugenie, forlorn Countess of Teba. Ron- 
da was worth a week, and we only gave 
it half an hour. At Bobadilla we left our 
pastoral railway, and took the train to 
Malaga. The scenery, till the dark came 
down and made an end of it, was more 
beautiful than that we had been watching 
all day, but enthusiasm has its limits, and 
a sunset effect through a mountain pass, 
a tinkling cascade, or a notable group of 
palms passed with languid comment. We 
"ate them as common things" now and 
did not try to characterize them. 

3i 



IV 

MALAGA 

Malaga seems the embodiment of 
the Spanish fate, fate meaning generally- 
character. Here is a spot which seems 
designed by nature to be the health 
resort of Europe; a perfect climate, 
absolutely faultless for eight months of 
the year ; a thermometer which does not 
vary five degrees Farenheit month in, 
month out ; an inexhaustible supply of 
the purest water ; fruits and vegetables 
in lavish abundance ; fish of all varieties 
and great excellence ; direct communica- 
tion with England, France, and Italy by 
sea, and railway connections of course. 
The city, in the Psalmist's language, is 
" beautiful for situation/' It lies in a 
rich valley about ten miles in extent, with 

32 



MALAGA 

mountains on three sides, which shelter 
it from all the cold winds, while on the 
south it is open to the sea. The near 
hills are green with verdure, while red 
and yellow, brown and gray mix in the 
coloring of the sterile masses of rock that 
rise beyond them into rough, lofty out- 
lines ; and beyond them again are the 
snow-white distant mountains. The sun- 
shine is absolutely unfailing ; an average 
of thirty-nine days of rain in the year 
makes the dryness of the air phenomenal. 
You find you must have had a sore throat 
all your life without knowing it ; breath- 
ing is a revelation ; digestion takes care 
of itself. The atmosphere is transparent, 
the sea and the sky of a marvelous blue ; 
the soil is generous, like the people; it 
looks like rocks and rubbish, but out of 
it grows tropical vegetation without any 
apparent moisture. Palm, banana, orange, 
eucalyptus, and cypress trees fill the gar- 
dens, olive and almond orchards cover the 
hills. All sorts of amiable flowers which 

33 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

we cultivate at home, such as periwinkle, 
carnations, oxalis, and sweet alyssum 
wander over the rocks wild. The rose, 
with all its train of sweet summer flowers, 
walks through the entire year in rich 
abundance. 

And all this wasted, as far as the out- 
side world goes (and the inside pocket of 
the Malaga citizen). I suppose the poor 
little half-naked children in the narrow 
streets benefit by it ; and the better class 
of the Spanish population are none the 
worse for it, but they might be so much 
the better. 

Malaga in point of fact is an uninter- 
esting Spanish town with dirty streets 
and squalid surroundings. There is not 
an English chemist or grocer in the place. 
If you want things, you have to do with- 
out them. There are two lines of tram- 
ways in the city, in which the men smoke 
with the doors closed. The hackney car- 
riages are miserable affairs, and the pave- 
ments in the city so rough, you are shaken 

34 



MALAGA 

to insensibility before you get beyond 
them into the country. There is in this 
city of over 160,000 inhabitants one mail 
a day which arrives about seven p. m. and 
is not delivered till the following morn- 
ing. There is no postal money order sys- 
tem ; if you wanted things from France 
or England, you should not have come 
to Malaga. There are few sights to see, 
and there is nothing to buy. They have 
whitewashed out all the Moorish re- 
mains that were not too big for the brush, 
and while they should be commended for 
trying to keep clean, it is a pity they 
should not make more of the antiquity of 
their city, which was Phoenician before it 
was Roman, and Moorish before it was 
Spanish. The modern Malaga citizen of 
the better class seems to think very little 
of such distinction ; his ambition runs to 
local politics and to the mild amenities of 
Spanish social life. 

Several new avenues have been laid out 
at great expense along the sea, and the 

35 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

Camino Nuevo, which goes up over the 
mountain, is like a bit of the Cornice 
Road. The Caleta, a large new portion 
of the city built out towards the east, is 
very pretty, all the houses commanding 
views of the sea, and being embowered 
in verdure. The Alameda is broad and 
long, and has fine trees, and ends near 
the port with a beautiful fountain which 
Charles V. ordered at Genoa for his huge 
misfit of a palace at Granada. It never 
got there, but after many adventures by 
land and sea, ended up in Malaga. The 
Calle de Marquis de Larios is really a 
leaf out of Paris, only the fine shops have 
nothing that is particularly pretty in them. 
The hotels are fairly comfortable. The 
theatres are said to be bad. There is a 
bull-ring, but bull-fights are a joy of the 
springtime, and had not yet begun. 

From all this it will be seen that there 
is not much to tempt the traveler away 
from the Riviera with its incessant amuse- 
ments and its natural beauties. But the 

36 



MALAGA 

Riviera is more or less damp in all parts ; 
the chill that falls at sunset is felt keenly, 
and there is a suspicion of malaria always. 
Here the transition from day to night 
brings no shock, and there is absolutely 
no malaria. The death-rate is very low, 
even under the evil conditions of squalor 
and starvation in which the lower class 
live. If Malaga could be generously 
brought up to the standard of the Rivi- 
era towns, it could not fail of popularity. 
Spain is not so worn out a field for the 
idle, and for the ill there is but one attrac- 
tion, and that is health, here more surely 
found than there. A corporal's guard of 
dull English people yearly come here with 
their invalids and take them home cured, 
but they do not spread the matter, having 
no interest in the enlargement of Malaga's 
borders, and not being by nature of a pro- 
selyting turn. 

Living here, of course, is cheap as com- 
pared with America or with France. The 
rent of a villa on the Caleta or an apart- 

37 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

ment on the Alameda would probably be 
much less than corresponding quarters in 
any winter resort in Europe. On less 
favorite streets no doubt the rates would 
be much more moderate. Servants' wages 
are very low; the servants, however, as 
a rule, are not very good. The food is 
cheap ; the meat ought to be nothing, it 
is so poor, but no doubt it has a nominal 
price. The vegetables and fruit and fish, 
as I said, are fit for a prince's table, and 
so are the wines. Sweets are the Spanish 
passion, and in consequence the con- 
fectioners' shops are full of exquisite 
dainties. Even the men delight in eating 
bonbons. 

The society in a Spanish city uncon- 
taminated by tourists is worth studying. 
There are enough English settled here to 
take off the dreariness of absolute isola- 
tion. Spanish as a language can be super- 
ficially acquired in a short time, and a 
knowledge of the Spanish character with 
like ease in a like imperfect manner. 

38 



MALAGA 

Malaga no doubt is provincial, but so I 
should think is every town in Spain, save 
probably Madrid. The married women 
all wear the mantilla ; the young women 
dress in indifferent French style. (They 
wear the mantilla, of course, at church.) 
The beauty of the Malaguefias is much 
extolled. The way of living is simple. 
There is no dinner-giving, and the even- 
ing entertainments are of the simplest 
character. People pay each other visits 
in the evening as they did in New York 
forty years ago. The walk along the 
mole is the great meeting-place in winter, 
and in the summer all, even the children, 
stay on the Alameda till after midnight. 
The great people have villas in the sub- 
urbs where they go in the summer, and 
where they drive their friends in the win- 
ter. But as these are only a few miles 
away, the change of air cannot be very 
marked. 

The lives and loves of the young people 
are just such as we have always heard 

39 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

they were, the guitar strumming, the 
love-making at the grated windows, the 
ogling on the mole, the murmured pas- 
sion on the moonlit Alameda; nothing 
seems to be nineteenth century but the 
clothes, which have only an antiquity of 
two or three years. 

"Pelar lapava," "plucking the turkey" 
is Spanish slang for the flirting that 
goes on at the grating, where the lover 
stands on the pavement, and the fair one 
sits on the window-seat inside. The term 
had its origin generations ago, when a 
maid, being summoned repeatedly by her 
mistress, excused herself repeatedly by 
calling out that she was plucking the 
turkey, while in fact she was listening to 
the beguiling words of a lover outside. 
The story is not very funny, nor the ex- 
pression very suggestive, but it seems to 
have embedded itself in the language. 
Our Western " talking turkey" no doubt 
comes from it. The amorous ogling at 
the theatre and on the promenade re- 

40 



MALAGA 

minds one of one's schooldays, but with 
grown-up men and women in Spain this 
seems to be " how it takes them " still. 
Sometimes marriage is evolved out of this 
pastime, but usually it seems only a fash- 
ion suited to the sentimental southern 
character. When, however, the matri- 
monial idea enters into the matter, and 
the youthful pair decide they cannot be 
happy unless the turkey-plucking goes on 
in ceternum, they do not act in the affair 
themselves. Contrary to the usages of 
other countries, they do not ask the father 
on either side, but it is to the madre that 
the delicate task is assigned. The mother 
of the young man goes to the mother of 
the young woman and asks the hand of 
her daughter for her son. Fancy the 
rashness of invoking the mother-in-law 
element at this early stage. 

An amusing part of Spanish etiquette, 
or the want of it, is the general use of the 
first name. A woman always keeps her 
own full name, adding her husband's in 

41 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

a casual explanatory way. For instance, 
Miss Mary Smith having married Mr. 
John Brown, her ordinary visiting card 
would read 

Mary Smith 
de Brown. 

That would suit the strong-minded ones 
of our own race who revolt at being 
merged in the existence of another. A 
Spanish woman is not called Donna or 
Senora till quite past middle life. You 
go out to return some visits and are em- 
barrassed to find you don't know for whom 
to ask at the door. You know you want 
a Maria Theresa, or a Concha, or a Pe- 
pita, charming young married women 
whom you have met when they called 
upon you, but you have no clue to their 
husbands' names. They use their cards 
as little as possible, and their titles not at 
all. They certainly make little pretense 
of any kind, but are simple, kindly, and 
sincere. 

The most original feature of the Span- 
42 



MALAGA 

ish matrimonial manner, however, is what 
is called "the deposit." That means, if 
a young girl wishes to marry a man of 
whom her parents disapprove, she cannot 
be forced to give him up. On the con- 
trary, she can force them into consenting 
to the marriage, if she is determined 
enough. If she has made a choice dis- 
pleasing to them any time after the age 
of sixteen, she has only to go to court 
and state her grievance, and the judge 
"deposits her," that is, he takes her from 
her father's house and places her in the 
care of some disinterested person. She 
is forbidden to hold communication with 
either lover or parent for a certain length 
of time, a few months generally, in aggra- 
vated cases perhaps a year or two. Con- 
vents are very convenient places in which 
to deposit such young persons, and the 
nuns not infrequently have an opportu- 
nity of seeing the perturbation and distress 
which they have escaped in leaving the 
naughty world themselves. If, the pro- 

43 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

bation ended, the girl still adheres to her 
determination to marry the man she has 
chosen, no one can prevent her ; she can 
demand her dot, and her parents have to 
submit. 

44 



LIFE IN A CONVENT 

If all convents are like the one on the 
hill of Barcenillas, they are among the 
least gloomy places I have ever known. 
We had a pretty suite of rooms opening on 
a sunny corridor. The four great windows 
of this corridor looked into the cloister, 
where sometimes, through the blinds, we 
watched " a bevy of the maids of heaven " 
in their deep violet habits and white veils 
laughing and talking together in their 
hour of recreation, walking about among 
the trees of the garden with, if not the 
innocence, something very like the joy of 
the unfallen Eve. 

Our pretty rooms, a dining-room and 
two bedrooms, were on the front of the 
convent ; the eucalyptus trees, shedding 

45 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

their bark in long thin strips, shivered 
their slender silver-green leaves before 
the windows. There was an avenue of 
them on each side leading down the steep 
decline towards the gate; a garden 
stretched in front between the two roads ; 
beyond the wall that shut off the convent 
grounds from the street, there were some 
low stucco houses and an olive orchard 
and some fields on one hand, and then, 
something more than a quarter of a mile 
away, the ground rose suddenly into a 
steep sugar-loaf hill, a "Calvary/' crowned 
with a small white chapel, with white 
crosses marking the stations up it. On 
the other hand were the flat towers and 
low roofs of the Victoria, the church 
built on the spot where the Catholic 
Kings pitched their tent, and heard the 
first mass said after the surrender of the 
city. Behind the old church rose vine- 
clad hills, and beyond them ruddy rocks 
and gray bald heights grew gradually up 
into mountains ; and above all this, the 

46 



LIFE IN A CONVENT 

glorious blue sky and the unfailing sun- 
shine of Andalusia. 

Within, all was pretty and dainty and 
scrupulously clean. The sunny windows 
of the corridor were ordinarily full of 
flowers, gentle and simple, — roses and 
jessamine and violets from the garden, — 
though it was January, or wild flowers 
from the mountain-side. Our tables were 
heaped with books from the convent 
library and from abroad. We did, as 
nearly as mortals can do, what we pleased. 
We were unmolested, unhurried, at ease ; 
and served for love and not for lucre. 

There were between thirty and forty 
nuns in the convent, and a large number 
of boarding scholars. The sisters taught, 
beside, a school for the poor, in the town. 
Education is very ill-provided for by the 
government, the teachers being underpaid, 
or not paid at all, for a year or two 
together. If it were not for the religious 
orders, it seems probable that none beside 
the rich would know how to read and 

47 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

write in Spain. The course of instruction 
at the convent was fairly up to date, 
according to our standard. According to 
the Spanish, it was very advanced. The 
order being a French one, most of the 
studies were in French. The English 
classes made excellent progress. Span- 
iards are good linguists ; I met more than 
one man, who, never having been out of 
Spain, spoke English without an accent, 
and understood even the slang of it, and 
kept up with its current literature. The 
women are much less studious, but have 
natural aptitude for the languages. The 
young girls at the convent were quick- 
witted, but indolent. The Spanish parent 
is even more indulgent than the American, 
and the soft-heartedness of both fathers 
and mothers makes the despair of the 
nuns. 

The children's parloir was from one 
o'clock to three on Sundays ; at that hour 
the grounds would be gay with the bright- 
colored garments of Spanish mothers, 

48 



LIFE IN A CONVENT 

and sombre with black-bearded Spanish 
fathers. The tons of bonbons they 
brought ! And the kissing and the fon- 
dling and the chattering ! 

The nuns have busy lives. The lay- 
sisters rise at half past four, the choir- 
sisters at five, and they go to bed at eight 
and nine respectively. They have two 
hours in all the long busy day for recrea- 
tion, when they are free to talk to each 
other, to wander about in their garden, and 
to forget their cares. Their dinner is at 
half past eleven, and their recreation hour 
is from twelve to one. At half past five 
they have supper, and from six to seven 
again they can talk and unbend. It is a 
wise rule that no allusion can be made in 
these hours to the vexations and burdens 
of the day, of which one may be sure 
there are plenty. 

They were the happiest-looking women, 
taken all together, that I have ever seen, 
eager and interested and gay. And as 
they were of many nationalities, it must 

49 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

have been la grdce d'itat and not a gift 
of nature. There were Spanish sisters, 
and English, and American, and German, 
and Italian, and French, — and yet with 
all the different characteristics of their 
many lands, and all the varied traditions 
of all the forty families from whence they 
came, I never saw, in the three months I 
stayed there, a sullen look, or heard an 
ungentle word. Whether I watched the 
lay-sisters hurrying about on their swift 
errands, or the choir-sisters in their work 
about the sanctuary, — guarding the chil- 
dren at their play, — bending over pianos 
teaching indolent pupils music, — correct- 
ing piles of copy-books, or marshaling 
girls from one class-room to another, it 
was always content, satisfaction with their 
lot, that their faces showed. It led one 
to think that the rule that made these 
all " to be of one mind in an house " must 
have been divinely inspired. St. Augus- 
tine wrote theirs out over fifteen hundred 
years ago, and with all the changes of 

50 



LIFE IN A CONVENT 

time and place it seems to work the same 
results. 

This order (that of the Assumption) 
has many foundations in Spain, notably 
two very important schools in Madrid. 
The sisters who teach have to pass the 
examinations and to hold the diplomas of 
the national schools in France, where the 
Mother House is (in Paris) and where 
they are all educated. The queen regent 
placed them, six or seven years ago, in 
charge of the public schools in Manila. 

They have also one or two foundations 
in Nicaragua, where, between revolutions 
and pestilences, their lives are in daily 
peril. Every three years they have to be 
recalled to France, to save them from the 
effects of the deadly climate, and fresh 
ones are sent out to fill their places. But 
they often plead to be left longer with 
their forlorn little charges, in that not 
quite, but very nearly, God-forsaken land. 

5i 



VI 

THE OLD FORTRESS 

The convent grounds extend over many 
acres. There is a small garden at one 
side into which the children's parloir 
opens. It is full of lovely flowers and 
palms; vines hang from the wall, and 
orange-trees skirt it. There is on the 
other side the community garden, to 
which the children never go, where the 
nuns can be assured of quiet. There are 
fine trees in it, and a summer house, and 
pretty little walks. The rest of the 
grounds are quite uncultivated. In past 
times the whole place had been a fine 
estate ; there are terraces, and a mirador, 
and cypress avenues, and a spring-house, 
and all sorts of remains of cultivation. 
But the foundation is rather a recent one, 

52 



THE OLD FORTRESS 

so that this vast garden cannot be civil- 
ised for a long while yet. But it is not 
half bad as it is. There is a path that 
leads through an avenue of cypresses 
along the ravine where the old spring- 
house stands, to an opening, whence (in 
January) you come upon the sight of the 
whole steep hillside covered with almond- 
trees in blossom. This almond orchard 
belongs to the convent, and is part of its 
great garden ; it extends up to the walls 
of the old Moorish fortress of Gibralfaro 
which we see dark against the sky from 
our windows. The almond blossoms come 
before the leaves ; it used to look like 
a fairy orchard. Then you skirt a deep 
ravine at your left, peopled with a grove 
of eucalyptus trees, and gradually you 
climb by the steep path to their very 
tops, and look down into them. The way 
is rough, but the wild flowers grow in 
diverting ranks on either hand, and you 
see more and more of the wide view as 
you rise, and presently you are at the 

53 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

top; behind you is Malaga spread out 
on its wide green plain, its many-colored 
mountains rising beyond ; and before you, 
looking down over the steep cliff, lie the 
pretty suburbs of the city, and the mole 
with its ships, and the wide blue Mediter- 
ranean. What a delicious wind always 
blows up here ! What an exquisite color 
the sea always wears ! What a green are 
the trees below, what a tawny, rich yellow 
the near mountains, what reds and browns, 
what shades of gray ! 

The old fortress is at your right hand ; 
on your left, separated from it by a ravine, 
and overlooking the same view, rises a 
steep cone-shaped hill, the hill where the 
Marquis of Cadiz was encamped while the 
Moors still held the Fortress of Gibral- 
faro, and where during the siege of the 
city he entertained Queen Isabella and 
her ladies at a banquet, while the surly 
Moor looked out from his embrasure. 
" The tent of the marques was of great 
magnitude, furnished with hangings of 

54 



THE OLD FORTRESS 

rich brocade and French cloth of the rar- 
est texture. It was in the oriental style ; 
and, as it crowned the height, with the 
surrounding tents of other cavaliers, all 
sumptuously furnished, presented a gay 
and silken contrast to the opposite towers 
of Gibralfaro. Here a splendid collation 
was served up to the sovereigns ; and the 
courtly revel that prevailed in this chival- 
rous encampment, the glitter of pageantry, 
and the bursts of festive music, made more 
striking the gloom and silence that reigned 
over the Moorish castle. 

"The Marques of Cadiz, while it was 
yet light, conducted his royal visitors to 
every point that commanded a view of 
the warlike scene below. He caused the 
heavy lombards also to be discharged, 
that the queen and ladies of the court 
might witness the effect of those tremen- 
dous engines. The fair dames were filled 
with awe and admiration, as the mountain 
shook beneath their feet with the thunder 
of the artillery, and they beheld great 

55 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

fragments of the Moorish walls tumbling 
down the rocks and precipices. 

" While the good marques was display- 
ing these things to his royal guests, he 
lifted up his eyes, and to his astonish- 
ment beheld his own banner hanging out 
from the nearest tower of Gibralf aro. The 
blood mantled in his cheek, for it was a 
banner which he had lost at the time of 
the memorable massacre of the heights 
of Malaga. To make this taunt more 
evident, several of the Gomeres displayed 
themselves upon the battlements, arrayed 
in the helmets and cuirasses of some of 
the cavaliers slain or captured on that 
occasion. The Marques of Cadiz re- 
strained his indignation, and held his 
peace ; but several of his cavaliers vowed 
loudly to revenge this cruel bravado, 
on the ferocious garrison of Gibralf aro.," 1 
The top of this sharp hill, the very apex 
of the cone, has been shaved off, and an 

1 Conquest of Granada, ch. lv. p. 320, 1. 10 : G. P. Put- 
nam, i860. 

56 



THE OLD FORTRESS 

ancient Arab well, of the heaviest ma- 
sonry, and even with the ground, lies 
open to the sky. You lie face down and 
look over into it, and see nothing but 
profound blackness, but if you throw a 
pebble over you hear it finally splash into 
the water far, far below. Nobody ever 
comes here ; you scramble alone up the 
steep face of the hill. If it were in Italy, 
or anywhere save in Spain, guide-books 
would tell the story, and signboards 
would point the way, and men and boys 
would dog your path and mumble inac- 
curacies, and gather in your pennies. 

57 



VII 

IN THE CONVENT GARDEN 

Beside the old Arab well I sometimes 
met a tall slender boy who used to bring 
his flock of goats here to drink, scaling 
the steepest side of the ascent with an 
agility that he must have learned of them. 
He always greeted me with the grave 
and charming courtesy of a Spaniard. 
Sometimes he caught for me one of the 
delicious little kids, of which there were 
a dozen or twenty in his flock, and while 
he held it, I would try to pat it, strug- 
gling and wild. Perhaps the touch of my 
suede glove "put strange memories " in 
its white or ecru head. We read in the 
Bible of the barbarous impiety of seeth- 
ing a kid in its mother's milk; perhaps 
patting one with the skin of a near rela- 

58 



IN THE CONVENT GARDEN 

tive may be as unholy a practice. At all 
events, the pretty mignons did not relish 
my touch at all, while they submitted 
quietly to the brown bare hand of their 
young guardian. 

I met many types of Spanish life up on 
this wild outskirt of the convent garden. 
On the slope of the Marquis of Cadiz 
hill, towards the sea, there was a solitary 
peasant's hut, which was approached by 
a narrow crumbling path, full of rattling 
stones. Its awful poverty fascinated me. 
One failed to see how human beings 
could exist under such conditions. There 
was an anxious effort visible, though, to 
make the best of the means at hand; 
stones were piled up to make a shelter 
for the wretched goat at night, and a 
solitary fig-tree had a little trench dug 
about it, which I saw a woman filling 
with water from a neighboring spring, 
bringing the water in a small gourd. 
There were two or three vines about a 
foot high, growing on the steep slope, 

59 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

which she was irrigating in the same 
painful way. A little patch of beans 
had burst through the stony soil, and 
gave promise of food later on. But re- 
splendent sunshine blazed overhead, dry 
purity filled the air, and the vast Mediter- 
ranean, dreamy and blue, spread limitless 
before the stolid, starved-looking being 
who grubbed about the roots of her piti- 
ful vines. There is the law of compensa- 
tion always to fall back upon. Once I 
met her towards nightfall ; the wind was 
rude and she looked blue and chill. 
Thinking how much bluer and chillier she 
would be before the morning sun came 
round again to warm her poor blood, I 
felt very sorry and gave her a peseta. 
No one could ever have given her one 
before, she looked so surprised and stupe- 
fied. After some dull consideration, she 
put it into her pocket, and went on with 
her work, and when I met her afterwards, 
she never looked expectant or gratified or 
interested. The long years of starvation 

60 



IN THE CONVENT GARDEN 

had done their work; neither pain nor 
pleasure took much hold upon her. 

I often saw men snaring birds up on 
this high wold. Their occupation was 
illicit ; they had no right to be there, but 
it is easier to wink at wrongdoing than 
to put it down, everywhere, and in Spain 
they always do the easiest thing. These 
lazy men, whose stock in trade is a net 
and some little snares which they pin in 
the ground, come up to this lonely spot 
and lie on the grass all day watching for 
their victims. They spread the net over 
the grass ; and for the smaller game they 
hang on a little pole a birdcage with a 
jocund singer in it, who lures the poor 
little birds to the fatal neighborhood. 
Beside the snares are little cups of seed 
and water; and when the pretty thing, 
after circling around many times, stoops to 
drink, the snare flies up and catches his 
tiny leg. Then there is fluttering and 
anguish ; and the lazy Spaniard lifts him- 
self up on his elbow, and, after a moment 

61 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

of natural protest at the necessity, gets on 
his feet and goes to the sufferer, taking it 
in one hand, as he releases its leg with the 
other, and puts it, after examination, into 
the larger cage where the other dupes of 
the day are beating their wings against 
the bars. Sometimes two men will lie 
basking in the sun till nightfall, half 
asleep, beside the same net. Qui dort, 
dine. I think the siestas must have been 
the only dinner they got, as a whole cage- 
ful of the minute songsters would bring 
them in but a few sous. There seems a 
great affection for birds among the poor ; 
sometimes you see half a dozen or more 
tiny wooden cages hanging over the un- 
glazed window of a cabin where there 
seems no other attempt to make life 
amiable. 

Another habitui of the convent garden 
was Jacky, the convent dog. The nuns 
were strongly attached to him ; he was 
only an underbred yellow cur, but he had 
great intelligence and was of a high order 

62 



IN THE CONVENT GARDEN 

of piety. One day he followed me up to 
the top of the hill, trotting cheerfully 
along in advance. Now at the very 
bottom of the hill, on the other side, by 
the sea, stands the English chapel, to 
which I was bound. I was afraid to have 
Jacky accompany me ; I thought he might 
get into trouble with some dogs belong- 
ing to a peasant near the bottom of the 
hill, and I was also afraid he would follow 
me into the chapel and create a scandal 
among the staid English worshipers in 
that very bald temple. I took pains to sit 
down on a rock, and call him to me, and 
explain to him that I was going to an 
heretical place of worship to which he 
had no right to go, and where he would 
not be welcome. He looked intelligent, 
but I am afraid he did not understand 
that anybody living in the convent could 
be going to the wrong sort of church. 
He rubbed his sandy paws on my dress, 
licked my hand, and seemed to promise 
obedience when I pointed back to the 

63 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

convent. I went on, but in a few minutes 
found that Jacky had made a detour and 
was trotting on some yards in front. I 
wanted to send him back, but time 
pressed, and I had only time to get to 
church. 

When Jacky reached the turn that the 
path takes which leads to the highest 
point of the convent property, he went 
on ; my path turned to the left, down the 
hill towards the sea. A straggling cactus 
hedge separates the two estates which 
here join, but there is no fence. It was 
as wild as any other mountain-top. I 
hoped Jacky would not see me, but in a 
moment he did and came hurrying back 
to the invisible boundary line. There he 
stopped and watched me going down the 
mountain with grave solicitude. I then 
was tempted to see if I could make him 
forsake his principles and follow me, and 
I called him and coaxed him, but he did 
not stir. He stood still and gazed after 
me going my heretical way, but never a 

64 



IN THE CONVENT GARDEN 

sandy paw did he put down on secular 
ground. He had not lived in a convent 
for nothing. 

Then there was the convent donkey. 
We did not find him as sympathetic as 
Jacky, and he was as obstinate as any 
other donkey, and had to be blindfolded 
when he was needed to work the pump 
which raised water for the convent. He 
quite refused to go round and round the 
monotonous circle when he could see it. 
It was plain he had no vocation, but he 
was needed, et que voulez-vous ? So old 
Francisco, the gardener, put a bandage 
round his eyes and led him up to the wide 
platform that surrounded the pump, and 
harnessed him to it and started him on 
his round. He often shook his head and 
made restless gestures, but did not dare 
to rebel. Quite typical of the Protestant 
idea of monastic life. 

65 



VIII 

A SPANISH CURE 

The cabman turned up out of a steep 
and narrow street into a steeper and nar- 
rower one where assuredly the sun had 
never penetrated since the Moorish occu- 
pation. Two brass plates on a large house 
told us this was where to come to be 
cured. A motley crowd beset the door. 
In a small vestibule some thirty people 
were pressing close to a little window in 
the wall, behind which a man sat writing. 
Halt and maimed and blind, in all sorts 
of habiliments, mixed in with persons of 
a higher grade. Were all the former 
being treated free? and what was the 
meaning of this beneficence ? 

A few words with a Civil Guard un- 
deceived us. This was a government 

66 



A SPANISH CURE 

office to which every human being who 
wishes to live in Malaga must come once 
in so many months to get his license to 
do so. It was only an accident that it 
was in the house where the cure was 
established. Houses in Malaga seem to 
belong to a great many different people, 
and to be sold and let in parcels. Some 
friends told me that on one occasion, 
wishing to have another entrance to their 
place, they had arranged to buy a certain 
small house which adjoined their grounds, 
and faced the street. The negotiations 
were nearly completed, they were on the 
point of signing the papers, when they 
discovered that they had bought every- 
thing but the facade of the house. That 
they could not have. It was quite out of 
the question, and the negotiations were 
declared at an end. 

It must be very tiresome to be obliged 
to read your title clear to your back stairs 
before you can go up and down them with 
confidence, and to be anxious lest you are 

6 7 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

not well fortified legally in the possession 
of your linen-closet. To find a favor- 
ite corner in your library slipping from 
your grasp, or a nursery closet sudden- 
ly brought into court, how unsettling ! 
Law in Spain is a terror to litigants. 
A lady told me, that in purchasing a 
piece of property, the largest room in the 
house, and it was a very large one, was 
crowded by the people who came to sign 
the deed. 

But to our cure. The odors of the mot- 
ley crowd in the vestibule penetrated to 
the house within. A smell of carbolic acid, 
mixed with all other essences known to 
science, filled the air. The noise of ma- 
chinery, and the darkness which is char- 
acteristic of all Spanish houses, added to 
the gloom. All that can be conceived of 
the horrible in dark plush and paper gar- 
nished the rooms. Heavy curtains hung 
at the windows and doors ; chairs too 
heavy to move stood against the walls. 
You were conducted from one room to 

68 



A SPANISH CURE 

another by servants in livery (at seven 
reals a day probably) ; to this room to 
wait till the doctor could see you ; to an- 
other in which he received you ; to a third 
in which he tested your lungs ; to a fourth 
in which, I should think, your heart, or 
some part of your anatomy that was not 
your lungs, was examined. The latest 
appliances for the discovery of disease 
were made as conspicuous as possible, 
and polished to the highest point. Never 
before had I felt how mortal I was, how 
hedged in and encompassed with perils ; 
how surprising it was that I was alive. 
The treatment which was prescribed after 
a diagnosis revealing nothing amiss but 
general debility, was, inhaling arsenic 
and oxygen, and taking a compressed 
air bath on alternate days. 

This last misery consists in sitting for 
two or three hours in an iron cage about 
three feet square and about six feet high, 
and of an incredible thickness. Into this 
compressed air is pumped. After you 

69 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

have entered, a horrid clanking noise ac- 
companies the screwing up of the door, 
which is done by two attendants ; you 
feel that you are past help. A pencil 
and paper are given to you by which to 
communicate with the outer world. If 
you are very ill and want to be let out, 
you must write your request on the 
paper and hold it up against a sort of 
port-hole, and if the doctor happens to 
be in sight, or an attendant, and can read 
the language in which it is written, you 
will, after an interval, be let out, — that 
is, if the machinery by which you are 
clamped in does not get out of order and 
refuse to work. I have seen the doctor 
standing on a chair and examining with 
an anxious face the roof of the iron cage 
where the door fastens on, and this while 
a patient was shut up in it. It may be 
that his anxiety was not that the door 
would not open, but I felt it might be. 
While in the cage the sound of the ma- 
chinery by which the air is forced in is 

70 



A SPANISH CURE 

most unpleasant ; you have a feeling that 
your head is being blown off. But then 
that is only imagination ; there is no dan- 
ger of your head being blown off, and 
you have only to reason with yourself 
about it, and to remember that nobody 
has ever been killed in this cage, what- 
ever may have been done in other cages. 
It is perhaps only imagination that 
makes you think you are cured after you 
have been incarcerated in it for the alter- 
nate days of many weeks ; but however 
that may be, most people do think so, and 
some really remarkable cures have been 
made. I knew a young Oxford man who 
had been brought to Malaga some three 
years before in apparently the last stage 
of consumption. He was considered en- 
tirely restored by this treatment, and 
seemed to be enjoying life as much as 
his fellows. Whether it was the cage 
and the compressed air, or Malaga and 
its incomparable climate, I do not know. 

7i 



IX 

SPANISH LIMITATIONS 

One of their limitations seemed to be 
clothes-lines. It would be a good mission- 
ary enterprise to send a cargo of clothes- 
lines to southern Spain, now that the 
missionary spirit seems to be so ablaze. 
The poor people wash their clothes on the 
sidewalks in the city ; out of the town, at 
the brook or spring, if there is one ; but 
urban or suburban, the drying practice is 
the same. They hang them on the win- 
dowsill or balcony, or, lacking these, they 
stretch them on the ground, or lay them 
on the pavement. You are not infre- 
quently obliged to step over Pipe's shirt 
or stockings, or to pick your way through 
Pepita's aprons. They look, of course, as 
dingy as one would expect from such life- 

72 



SPANISH LIMITATIONS 

long contact with the dust of the city 
stones, and the red earth of the country 
brookside. A walk which I often took 
commands from one of its terraces the 
interior of several Spanish gardens of the 
better sort, and some of the lower, too. 
The same method prevails in both, and 
the clothes are generally dried as Provi- 
dence pleases ; in very few cases is pro- 
vision made for suspending them in the 
air by artificial means. 

Another limitation is in the matter of 
fuel, more stringent, even, than in thrifty 
France or impoverished Italy. The poor 
buy charcoal from bags carried on the 
backs of donkeys. This is weighed out by 
the dealer in scales about the size of those 
we use in the kitchen for measuring out 
flour and sugar. In the better houses of the 
middle class there is a sort of stove, with- 
out any chimney or pipe, of course, and in 
this there are little compartments, hold- 
ing a lump of charcoal, under a hole on 
which a saucepan is placed. If you need 

73 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

two saucepans, you light coal in two of 
these compartments, and so on. The 
abjectly poor do not cook at all, but live on 
fruits and bread and on a sort of hot cake 
which they buy in the street. Early in 
the morning it is interesting to watch the 
stands of those who make what look like 
crullers "while you wait," or flat cakes 
like corn-bread. At some of the little 
inns out on country-roads, you see the 
cooking done on the stones before the 
door, and it smells very good, though I 
doubt if it would taste so. 

In January there are generally some 
bitter days, when the thermometer goes 
down to forty-two degrees or thereabouts, 
and the poor half-naked people suffer 
greatly. Their windows are not glazed, 
and all the warmth they can get is from 
the ineffectual winter sun. When the sun 
goes down, therefore, they are in a bad 
way. About sunset you see the careful 
housewife bringing out to the door her 
pan of charcoal which she has arranged, 

74 



SPANISH LIMITATIONS 

with sticks and leaves for kindling, and 
which she lights and blows up into a 
blaze. The children stand gaping around 
her. When the charcoal is well ignited 
and the flame has gone down, she takes 
it inside and the children follow. Then 
the board shutter of the unglazed window 
is barred, as well as the door, and they 
all sit down at a round table which has a 
low shelf near the floor with a hole in 
the middle, in which they put the pan of 
coals. Then they place their feet on the 
shelf and thus they enjoy "their ain 
fireside." Fancy what it must be in the 
six-by-eight little cabin, with as many in- 
mates as there are feet in its dimensions, 
as dark as a pocket, and with an atmos- 
phere that you could cut with a knife. 
But while the pinching days in winter are 
few, the glorious sunshine of the whole 
year must often be lost by the sudden 
chill and the diseases engendered by 
exposure to the unusual cold. I have 
often seen young children in the streets 

75 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

of Malaga with bare feet and bare heads, 
and, to be exact, clothed only in a thin 
cotton frock and cotton waist under it, 
when furs and flannels were necessary to 
Anglo-Saxons. They sit blue and be- 
numbed on the stone doorstep with not 
even the ceremony of the tattered cotton 
skirt between it and their tender flesh. I 
used to think, after these occasional cold 
days, that there was an increase of shabby 
hearses clattering over the rough stones. 
The death-rate is astonishingly low in the 
city, but it is not on account of the activ- 
ity of the board of health. Small-pox 
is always, not raging, but loafing about. 
" Oh, we always have more or less small- 
pox in Malaga/' they tell you noncha- 
lantly. It seems to inspire no terror. 

About sunset, one day that winter, I 
was looking down from the mirador that 
commands at short range a little alley 
below the convent grounds. I saw a rat- 
tling old hearse draw up before the 
entrance to the nearest of the corrals or 

76 



SPANISH LIMITATIONS 

courts of which it is formed. An un- 
usual stir pervaded the court. Groups of 
children stood gaping in at the door of 
one of the little apartments. Women 
with handkerchiefs tied on their heads 
came in from the alley and gaped too. 
Inside the dark door which the children 
surrounded, I saw two candles burning. 
Finally a man in uniform came, and after 
a while, another. The first went into 
the room where the candles burned, and 
led out, with a gentle kindness of manner, 
an old woman whose cries rent the air ; 
then he went back and led out a younger 
one. Her hair was disheveled as if she 
had literally been tearing it when she was 
parting with her dead. I was deeply 
touched with the sight of all this misery ; 
it was so near to where I stood that I 
almost formed part of the scene. 

It was with no pleasant feelings that 
four or five days later I heard that small- 
pox was raging in the little court, and 
that it was a small-pox funeral at which I 

77 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

had assisted. I found that it was not con- 
sidered a subject for uneasiness. No- 
thing was ever done about fumigating 
the court ; there was never the faintest 
odor of carbolic ; the clothes were washed 
and hung to dry on the window-sills ; the 
water was thrown out into the alley; 
fishmongers came crying down from the 
Calle de la Victoria ; women gossiped at 
the corner ; everything seemed to go on 
as before. The paternal government of 
the city offers free vaccination to all, but 
it does not supplement the insufficient 
intelligence of the poor by enforcing any 
rules of prevention or correction in the 
matter of disease. 

After a few days we heard that one pa- 
tient in this court, a young girl who was 
convalescent, had gone out for a walk, " as 
the sores were beginning to dry up." Not 
long after, we saw a boy of twenty sitting 
on the steps of the post office, which is in 
the heart of the town. He had his trou- 
sers rolled up above his knees, and was 

78 



SPANISH LIMITATIONS 

thoughtfully picking off scabs from his 
legs, and dropping them on the pavement. 
The young daughter of one of my Malaga 
friends was kneeling in the cathedral 
once, when a beggar came up to her and 
asked an alms, telling her, as an excuse 
for her importunity, that her child had 
just died of small-pox. The wife of the 
British consul told me that recently she 
was in a stationer's shop with a friend 
who was making some purchases. A child 
with a face disfigured by sores and with 
her head bound up was fingering the 
note-paper which the shopkeeper had 
taken down for them to look at. They 
glanced at her with a startled expression. 
"Oh," explained the man reassuringly, 
"she'll soon be all right. She's just 
had small-pox." 

They did not stop to look at the note- 
paper; the man probably never knew 
why they fled, but put it down to the 
general eccentricity of foreigners. 

79 



X 

A MIGRATING FAMILY 

The diligence was an hour and a quar- 
ter beyond its advertised time of starting. 
Maria and Francisco, who live in the con- 
vent lodge, carried our bags and wraps, 
and had gone on before to hold the dili- 
gence, if by any chance it should be on 
time. 

We found them waiting for us, sit- 
ting on the stone bench of a little shop 
shaded with vines. The woman within 
obligingly brought us out some chairs, 
and looked for no reward. 

It was a large open square in the sub- 
urbs, where we had gone to await the 
diligence. At a fountain women were 
filling their jars with water, while men 
and boys sat on the stone benches beside 

80 



A MIGRATING FAMILY 

it. The sun was warm, but the wind was 
cold. We looked across a green field to 
the cemetery, the great white gates of 
which stood out against a background of 
purple mountains. But they were closed, 
and we could not go there to pass the 
time. Before a wine-shop on the other 
side of the square some carts were being 
loaded ; they might be as interesting as 
gravestones, so we went across and joined 
a lot of peasants collected there, some 
sitting on their luggage, and some on the 
stones. One cart seemed to be taking 
only merchandise, a freight train as we 
should say, a goods train as our English 
friends would call it. The carts were 
two-wheeled affairs with round canvas 
tops, drawn by five or six mules each, 
harnessed one before the other. The 
wheels were enormous, eight or nine feet 
in diameter. The loading of the carts 
was skilled labor. This one seemed to 
contain the household effects of two or 
three migrating families; pans, pots, 

81 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

beds, chairs, were all lashed on by 
ropes. It was bound for Granada, and 
would be five days on the way, a dis- 
tance of seven hours by rail. 

A family around which our affections 
became entwined, in the hour we waited 
for the diligence, consisted of a father 
and mother and two daughters, one eight- 
een, the other ten. The father had a 
broken nose, but otherwise was fine-look- 
ing and tall. He had an air of distinc- 
tion. The mother had been handsome, 
her thick gray hair w r aved and was neatly 
combed, her face was bright with intelli- 
gence. She had not the smallest look of 
anxiety even in this ordeal of demenage- 
ment ; in fact, they all seemed to take it 
as a most agreeable event. The elder 
daughter was a magnificent brunette, 
with masses of black hair growing low, 
a rich dark skin, a perfect nose, and very 
striking eyes and eyebrows. The lower 
part of her face, however, was too heavy, 
and her expression was occasionally re- 

82 



A MIGRATING FAMILY 

pellant. She looked a spoiled beauty, 
and her dazzling smiles were all reflec- 
tions of the admiring glances of the men 
around the cart. The younger girl, on 
the contrary, had a charming face, with 
as much regular beauty as her sister, in 
addition to a sweet intelligence. The 
traveling dresses of the three consisted 
of strait cotton gowns and aprons, and 
small woolen shawls, supplemented in the 
case of the two girls with a pink paper 
carnation stuck directly on the top of 
their heads. The elder girl had a dash 
of powder over her fine dark skin. (The 
use of powder is almost universal among 
Spanish women of all classes.) Their 
aprons seemed to serve the purpose of 
dressing-bags and luncheon-baskets. The 
beauty, however, had hers filled with a 
very commonplace cat and a litter of new- 
born kittens, — the fine-lady instinct to 
draw attention and provoke comment by 
means of pets. The men all had a word 
for the cats, and for their pretty mistress, 

83 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

who sat down in a lazy way, and did no- 
thing to help her mother. 

The mother's apron revealed a curious 
collection of things when her husband 
came to ask her for some bread. There 
were stockings, and bottles, and a table- 
cover, and some photographs in frames, 
and some keys and a bowl, a lot of beans, 
and a pair of drawers, a crucifix, and a 
china saint ; and from the bottom she 
fetched out, in answer to her husband's 
request, a loaf and a half of bread. I won- 
dered whether she traveled with the cor- 
ners of her apron always clutched in her 
hand to sustain this not light weight, or 
whether in moments of relaxation, or at 
times of emergency, she took off the 
apron and tied it into a bundle. 

Finally the second cart was ready, and 
the women and children were drawn and 
pulled and pushed up into it, high up in 
the air, where they sat on heaps of lug- 
gage, with their heads against the canvas 
top, looking uncomfortable and unsteady. 

84 



A MIGRATING FAMILY 

The pretty little girl had been put in, 
showing through a very bad pair of shoes 
all ten toes, as she scrambled up to her 
place on a roll of matting. When it came 
to the beauty's turn, after a whispered 
consultation with her mother, they both 
declined to mount, and the cart started 
without them, with great shouting of Ola 
mul6 ! on the part of the driver, and of 
vociferous good wishes on the part of the 
bystanders. I asked the two women if 
they were not going on the cart. " Oh, 
yes," they said, they were going to walk 
beside it and get in a little later, where 
there were no people ; they did not want 
to show their legs climbing up. That was 
all very well, but I doubt whether it was 
all Christian modesty ; it was possibly 
carnal pride because their shoes were not 
good. A paper carnation for the top of 
one's head costs less than a pair of shoes 
for one's feet. Shoes are stern and solid 
facts, with which it is difficult to deal 
airily. 

85 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

We watched the cart climbing slowly 
up the steep ascent, and the two women 
walking beside it, till all were out of sight. 
It would take those poor people nearly as 
long to get to their destination as it would 
take us to get across the Atlantic ; it was 
to them as much of an enterprise, of a 
venture. 

By and by our laggard diligence came 
along, and we soon overtook them, the 
women still walking. We wished them 
good-by as we passed them, and they 
wished us that we might go on with 
God. 

86 



XI 

IN THE MALAGA MOUNTAINS 

We had the choice of places in the 
diligence, and we chose the two seats 
beside the driver as giving us some pro- 
tection from the wind, and a good view of 
the mountains. Besides, we could ask 
questions of the driver, who seemed an 
intelligent sort of man. We went at a 
snail's pace with our six mules and our 
not full diligence. The road was a per- 
fect one, broad and hard and smooth as 
a table, but it was very steep. As we 
went up higher and higher, the pitch was 
very sharp, and the poor mules had to be 
admonished and incited with voice and 
whip, and even with kicks from the postil- 
ion, who ran along beside them and cursed 
himself hoarse at the worst places. By 

8? 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

and by we were looking down on all the 
world. Malaga was far off ; the cathedral 
tower was growing a little speck; the 
blue, dreamy Mediterranean mixed with 
the blue sky as we gazed back at it. 
There was snow on the distant Sierra 
Nevadas, and a strong wind was blow- 
ing, but the splendid Spanish sunshine 
warmed the wind ; the snow was too far 
off to chill it. In summer, though, I am 
told, this road, without a tree to shade it, 
and with the sun beating down on its 
white flinty smoothness, is something to 
think of with awe. It was built fifty or 
sixty years ago by convicts, and they say 
that often the poor wretches would throw 
down spade and pick, and fling them- 
selves over the precipices, choosing death 
rather than life if it were to go on like 
this. 

Along the road at considerable inter- 
vals are low stuccoed cabins, where the 
workmen live who keep it in order. They 
wear a pretty uniform, brown jackets with 

88 



IN THE MALAGA MOUNTAINS 

red facings and silver buttons. They are 
paid seven reals a day (thirty-five cents) 
and have the little stuccoed cabin to live 
in, but they have to supply their uniforms 
and to support their families out of the 
thirty-five cents. Nevertheless the post 
is a desired one, and to get a man a place 
on the road is to do him a favor. 

The Spanish peasant may not work, 
but neither does he eat. They who 
want least are most like the gods, for 
they want nothing. The peasants of 
these mountains seem to want very little ; 
whether their indolence is the result of 
being half-starved, or their condition of 
starvation the consequence of their indo- 
lence, is a question. As we went up the 
mountain, we met troops of them with 
their mules or donkeys, looking like the 
coming of Birnam Wood to Dunsinane. 
Great fagots of dried weeds and branches 
on each side of the patient beasts swept 
the ground and nodded high in the air. 
These are for sale in the town for heat- 

89 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

ing ovens and for purposes of kindling. 
Probably if a load nets a man a peseta, 
he thinks he has done well. 

It was early in the day when our driver 
took his first meal, which was wrapped 
in newspaper, each thing in a different 
parcel, a motley collection ; cold fried 
fish, radishes, some smoked meat, raisins, 
and figs. Before beginning he asked us 
to share the repast with him, though not 
expecting us to do so. Spanish etiquette 
is so stringent on this point that to every 
man who passed us on mule or donkey- 
back or afoot, he extended the same in- 
vitation, which they took as simply as if 
he had said good-morning. To the pos- 
tilion, however, it was more than a form ; 
I suppose it was in the bond, for of 
everything of which he ate himself, he 
cut a smaller portion and handed it down 
to the man, who munched the fish and 
the raisins while he trotted alongside the 
mules, and held the chunk of bread in 
his teeth while he ran forward to kick 

90 



IN THE MALAGA MOUNTAINS 

the leader, or dropped back to tighten a 
strap of the wheeler. 

We reached the Venta, where we were 
to spend the night, late in the afternoon. 
The diligence drew up at the door ; sev- 
eral soldiers were standing around it, 
some children and two or three women. 
It was a shock to us to see two black 
pigs trotting through the doorway before 
us, and to find a mule tied inside to 
a chain which hung from the rafters. 
Within, on the right of the big doors, 
which stood open, was a room where was 
a counter, and glasses, and kegs of liquor. 
On the left, the paved room ended in a 
chimney-piece, running nearly across the 
end, some twelve or fourteen feet wide. 
The rafters above were black with smoke, 
but the side-walls had been whitewashed. 
There was one window, high up, but it 
was closed with shutters, and all the light 
came from the door. There was a little 
fire on the stones in the middle of the 
chimney, a half -burned log and a couple 

9i 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

of smouldering crooked sticks. Around 
this three or four men were seated. A 
gun stood in one corner of the chimney ; 
the men were rough-looking peasants ; 
one had only straw sandals on his bare 
feet. Three hungry cats came pressing 
up close to us, and the two black pigs 
were fighting over some treasure in the 
corner. A blear-eyed and unlovely old 
woman made a place for us by the fire, 
and told a boy to get some more wood. 
We were sorry the diligence had gone 
on, for it could not have taken us to a 
worse place, we thought. 

The old woman said she had no room 
ready, but we might go and look at one 
she might perhaps arrange for us. It 
opened out of the one we were in. Wav- 
ing aside the pigs who were grunting 
and munching just at its entrance, she 
pushed open the door and took us in. 
On the stone floor in one corner lay a 
heap of rags ; in another, several bunches 
of onions. A toppling shelf held a pea- 

92 



IN THE MALAGA MOUNTAINS 

sant's shirt. There was a table piled 
with clothes and household utensils, and 
she rooted out from among them a pair 
of sheets, which she held up as an ear- 
nest of her ability to provide us with 
beds. There was no other furniture in 
the room. The window, which was not 
glazed, opened upon a farmyard where 
goats, donkeys, and pigs waded in deep 
filth. The sill of the window was not 
four feet from the ground. We went 
out of the room very quickly, and told 
her. it was quite impossible for us to 
sleep in it. Wasn't there a place up- 
stairs ? No, the soldiers had all the 
room there was up there. We told her 
she must find us something better. Af- 
ter a while she came back and asked us 
if we would like to sleep at the house 
across the way. This we were willing to 
do, almost thankful. Anything to get 
away from the black pigs and the black- 
eyed soldiers and the cut-throat looking 
men who sat around the fire. The room 

93 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

over the way had no glass in the window, 
and no covering on the stone floor, but 
those were mere trifles. They would put 
us up beds, and the matter was settled. 

Then we had to go back to the Venta 
to see about our dinner, for these were 
only lodgings. The old woman was 
awaiting us with a sinister look which 
deepened when we began to talk to her 
of food. What had she in the house ? 

" Oh, everything." Well, what ? Had 
she butter ? 

" Oh plenty. White butter, that is." 

We did not want lard, so we passed 
on to meat. What had she ? 

" Goat's meat," she said, though I have 
no doubt the goat was still in the enjoy- 
ment of life and liberty. 

No, we did not care for goat's meat. 
What else ? 

Our pertinacity seemed to make the 
situation serious. Her puckered old face 
grew wily. There was a cock, she said, 
that she might kill, but he was big and 

94 



IN THE MALAGA MOUNTAINS 

very old. She looked at us sharply as 
she dwelt upon his age and his tough- 
ness. I do not know what she would 
have said if we had told her to cook him 
for our dinner. He had probably done 
duty for a good many tired travelers be- 
fore us. I suppose, if he was accepted, 
he was never found, and the time spent 
in trying to catch him served as an ex- 
cuse for all sorts of shortcomings in the 
bill of fare. The bread we had looked 
at, and did not want to taste. It resolved 
itself into boiled potatoes, potatoes with 
their jackets on, as a protection against 
the grimy pot into which we saw them 
put, for we had followed the old woman 
into a dark little kitchen which adjoined 
the big room where the fire was, — and 
the men, and the black pigs, and the 
donkey tethered to the rafters. There 
was, instead of a stove, a bricked space 
with holes in it, and underneath were lit- 
tle apertures for coal. She put the pot 
over one of these holes, and got a few 

95 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

embers from the smouldering fire in the 
big room, but the embers went out con- 
tinually, and there seemed no progress 
made. Other guests were arriving all 
the time; muleteers who wanted some- 
thing from the " bar " called her off con- 
tinually. We were in despair, for we 
were very hungry. She took all our im- 
portunities as if she were used to them, 
and said "presently" and that sort of 
thing, as other publicans of higher degree 
do. ' 

Rashly we resolved to go out and see 
if there were no other place where we 
could get some food. The sun was set- 
ting. We walked along the road with no 
hearts for the magnificent mountains and 
the resplendent sky. Down in the val- 
ley, far off, there were two or three little 
white villas in sight with cypresses around 
them, and terraces, but we knew they were 
closed, and only used in summer. At 
last, we came to a peasant's cabin, with 
its stuccoed side towards the road blank 

96 



IN THE MALAGA MOUNTAINS 

of windows. From a low door issued a 
woman with a shovel on the end of a long 
stick. An oven was built outside the hut, 
in which she proceeded to push loaves of 
bread to be baked. But they were not 
yet baked, alas ! We went into the door 
and looked at the interior. The floor was 
paved with very irregular cobble-stones. 
I never saw a street as rough, and very 
few as dirty. In one corner there was a 
little heap of ashes, and as the wall above 
it was much smoked, I followed the dis- 
coloration up to the ceiling, and found a 
hole in it. That was their " ain fireside/ ' 
I pushed on into the other room, which 
was all the house contained. There 
were two indescribably dirty beds, and 
under one a very large black pig was 
rooting. 

We concluded to go back to the Venta 
and be thankful. The long walk in the 
keen mountain air, the lonely grandeur 
of the scenery, the gathering twilight, 
made us more philosophic and less criti- 

97 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

cal. The old woman met us with the 
assurance that our dinner (the two pota- 
toes) was ready. Perhaps she had found 
something else ! Alas, no. We went in 
and sat down by the fire, which we tried 
to beguile a little boy to keep supplied 
with dried weeds and bits of stick. But 
he soon got tired and disappeared. Very 
few people in Spain like to work. Three 
people undertook that fire, and got tired 
and disappeared before we got our din- 
ner. The old woman placed a table for 
us. It was a small low table, and we 
brought it close up to the fire inside the 
chimney. Everybody in Spain uses low 
chairs, which are like dachshunds in the 
matter of legs ; after giving us a couple 
of these she went away for a cloth ; then 
for two soup-plates, which she washed 
before giving us. Each knife and spoon 
she seemed to bring from a separate 
source, one from a bureau-drawer, an- 
other from a high shelf; she went up 
stairs for the cup and saucer, and I have 

98 



IN THE MALAGA MOUNTAINS 

little doubt she brought them from be- 
tween the blankets of her bed. 

In the meanwhile the cold and dark- 
ness had increased the circle around the 
fire. A herd of goats came pattering in 
at the great open door. I was afraid they 
were going to join us, but they went 
through to the farmyard, and a boy shut 
the gates upon them. A man on a mule 
rode into the room, hitched his beast to 
the swinging iron chain, unwrapped the 
muffler about his neck, and came up to 
the fire to warm himself. There were a 
good many children, more or less dirty, 
swarming about. A soldier took the least 
one on his knee, and seemed kindly dis- 
posed towards it. 

Finally the repast was ready. The two 
potatoes and some ashy salt were placed 
before us. The nuns at the convent had 
insisted on putting up a basket of lunch- 
eon for us. We had thought it very un- 
necessary, but we opened it with eager 
interest now. What treasures it con- 

99 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

tained! We need not have ordered 
"dinner." Butter, French rolls, cold 
meat, sandwiches, chocolate, figs, raisins, 
cake, wine, biscuits, eggs, tea ! But we 
had two days to stay in these wolfish 
mountains before we could get away ; we 
must husband our resources. Three of 
the hungriest cats I ever saw fastened 
themselves on the basket covers, and 
raged with desire to get at the food 
inside. There never were animals so 
famished as in these regions. Mongrel 
dogs with hollow sides, thin goats, ema- 
ciated cats, bony chickens, gaunt cows, 
ghastly horses, — if you were not so sorry 
for the people, you would weep for the 
animals. The children who pressed 
around us and watched us eating were 
not very pretty or interesting. There 
was one, however, a little girl of perhaps 
nine, holding a baby of six months in her 
arms, whose face attracted me. She had 
a dreary look, and was not over-confident 
like the others who crowded up to us. 

IOO 



IN THE MALAGA MOUNTAINS 

Upon questioning her, we found she was 
the little servant of the house ; she made 
the beds, she watched the children, she 
washed the dishes. Heavens ! It was 
bad enough to be the child of such a 
house, but to be the servant of it ! No 
wonder she looked dreary, poor mite. 
She did not know how long she had 
lived there ; she did not know if she was 
paid for what, she did. I am afraid she 
was not very clever, but she had a sweet 
little fleeting smile when we talked to her, 
as if she would have liked to be a child if 
she could, and play. I think I never felt 
more sorry for any young creature. Poor 
little Concha ! We fed her with biscuits 
and cake, which she took with guilty looks 
around, feeling the unnaturalness of such 
prosperity. We meant to have given her 
some pesetas when we went away the next 
afternoon, but she was not to be found, 
and we had not confidence that they 
would reach her if we left them with the 
blear-eyed old landlady. Concha was not 

IOI 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

in luck that day ; I am afraid she never 
has been, and never will be. For that 
sort we ought to say our prayers. 

After we had eaten our dinner, and the 
table was taken away, we began to think 
of our lodging across the road. But the 
beds were not ready yet. They were 
taken over from the Venta piecemeal to 
be put up there. No one seemed to keep 
long at any work. The boy who was car- 
rying the beds stopped first to get a glass 
of anisetta for a newcomer, and then to 
do some other chore, and the young 
woman who should have been making 
the beds came over to sit by the fire 
and talk to the soldiers. There was no- 
thing for us to do but wait. 

The soldiers of whom I had been so 
much afraid proved to be our best friends, 
protectors without whom we should not 
have been safe in this remote wild place. 
They were Guardia Civile; and what 
Spain lacks in other things she makes 
up in the protection of her suburban pop- 

102 



IN THE MALAGA MOUNTAINS 

ulation. These men told us by the fire- 
light about the service to which they 
belonged, and I heard a great deal of it 
afterwards from people I knew. There 
are 1600 of the service in the province 
of Malaga alone, this being considered a 
very dangerous neighborhood. They have 
districts allotted them, and day and night 
they patrol the roads, and guard the houses 
and property of the scattered population. 
The little white villas could not otherwise 
be inhabited, and the poor peasants in 
their stuccoed huts could not keep a goat 
or a pig. 

They are fine-looking men, the pick of 
the army ; they must pass a strict exami- 
nation, and have had a good record for 
a number of years. This branch of the 
public service is much sought after. I 
ventured to ask the pay. Three pesetas 
(sixty cents) a day, and a house. But out 
of this they supply their uniforms, and it 
is always insisted on that their appoint- 
ments be in order. I noticed that even 

103 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

their boots were well blacked. 1 One tall 
young fellow was rubbing between his 
slender hands a chain, which he was 
cleaning. He showed it to me, and ex- 
plained its use to handcuff a prisoner and 
bring him in, covered with a pistol. The 
guard's hands were so slender I should 
have thought these gyves that fitted him 
would have been too tight for an ordinary 
evil-doer. But the hands and feet of 
Spaniards of all classes are very small; 
they really use them so little, it is pos- 
sible, is it not, that they are in process of 
absorption, and that three or four cen- 
turies hence this peninsula may be inhab- 
ited by a race of unhanded and unfooted 
beings. 

The Guardia Civile are naturally great 
favorites with the families whose property 
they protect ; they have the entree of all 
the kitchens, and the servants offer them 
the hospitality of the fire, and often, no 

1 Their arms and ammunition are supplied them by the 
state. 

104 



IN THE MALAGA MOUNTAINS 

doubt, a surreptitious glass of wine and 
plate of oily dainty. In one case I know 
of, there had been much disturbance in 
the neighborhood, and after my friends 
came to their villa, the anxious mother 
of the family could not sleep at night 
for thinking about the brigands. So she 
made a requisition for two extra guards, 
and the paternal government gave them 
to her, to take her children out to walk, 
and to watch the house day and night. 

In consequence of these intimate rela- 
tions the guards know all the family his- 
tory of the neighborhood to which they 
are assigned, and are a little given to 
gossip, their only failing. One of ^those 
around the fire that night recognized my 
companion as a little girl he had once 
been detailed to take out to walk, and he 
was very much pleased that she recalled 
his name and face. 

The manners of these men, and of all 
the servants in Spain, are very free from 
constraint, and yet are not impertinent. 
105 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

One would say it was a survival of the 
old Catholic feeling of equality before 
God. They are warm-hearted and they 
quickly attach themselves to the families 
they serve ; an easy simple relationship 
grows up between them. They have not 
aspirations, like our native and Irish 
underlings. You seldom see one of them 
in a distinctive dress ; the maids accom- 
pany their mistresses in the street, wear- 
ing a plain print skirt, a shawl, and a 
handkerchief tied over the head. The 
coachmen on the boxes of private car- 
riages have the same sort of cap which 
is worn by the drivers of cabs, and very 
often have not even that mark of their 
calling, but wear the sombrero general to 
the lower class. I should say the tie be- 
tween master and servant in Spain was 
much like that between the Southern 
slave-owner and his house-servants, before 
the war. 

Having got over my fear of them, the 
guards and the peasants around the fire 

1 06 



IN THE MALAGA MOUNTAINS 

were very interesting, and were civil after 
their lights. I shall always think our 
prejudice against the Spanish is based 
upon their physical differences from us. 
We mislike them for their complexion, 
which is swarthy, and for their features, 
which are forbidding. The treachery is 
a matter of coloring, and the cruelty, of 
outline. They are the kindest people in 
the world, and as honest as — nous autres. 
I have never been cheated by a trades- 
man in Spain, I have never been uncivilly 
treated by one. They are so slow and 
tiresome, I should not dare to say I have 
never been uncivil to them. 

But there was no incivility on either side 
that night. They were much interested 
in me and my furs. Each newcomer was 
told, " She is a North American," and as 
they have not the habit of disguising their 
curiosity, but are entirely children of Na- 
ture, they gazed at me for long spaces 
without removing their black eyes from 
my face for a moment. They inquired 

107 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

into the nature and habits of the animals 
from which my furs were taken. One of 
the guards said, when I shivered at the 
strong wind blowing down the great chim- 
ney on my head, " Why is she so cold ? 
She comes from a colder place than this." 
My companion explained that in my coun- 
try they had better fires than here. Then 
they piled more weeds on, and we had 
five minutes of blaze, succeeded by ten 
of gloom. 

Finally we were told that our beds in 
the cottage opposite were ready, and we 
crossed the broad white road in a glory 
of moonlight which showed us the moun- 
tains lying like a sea below us, and 
entered our low dark room. It was so 
sharply cold that we had to ask for hot 
water to fill our India-rubber bags. That 
seemed a little thing to ask, but I have 
seen a five-course dinner cooked with less 
expenditure of time and effort. First 
the water had to be sent for to the 
Venta ; all the water here is brought 

1 08 



IN THE MALAGA MOUNTAINS 

from a picturesque fountain a good way- 
down the mountain, called "The Queen's 
Fountain," where Isabella once stopped 
to drink, and where the arms of Castile 
are still visible under many coats of 
whitewash. The men bring the water in 
earthen jars on the backs of mules, and 
it may well be believed it is not used 
lavishly for household purposes. Pro- 
bably it saves their lives that there is no 
water near their dwellings, for the contam- 
ination could not be other than certain, 
considering their habits. 

After the water was got, the fire had 
to be renewed ; weeds were hunted for 
outside and after long delay ignited, and 
then the blaze died down before the 
water, set on the ashy hearth in a little 
pipkin, had approached the boiling point. 
More weed - hunting, more striking of 
matches, more failure to get up any heat. 
This was repeated several times before 
the water was hot enough to put in the 
bags. All the water heated in this way 

109 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

had an insufferable smell of smoke, and 
for our subsequent meals, when we wanted 
to make tea, it was the same. 

Our cot-beds were clean, I hope, but 
they were not comfortable. The pillow 
was always slipping off at the head, and 
the hot-water bag slipping out at the 
foot, and the blankets slipping down at 
the side. The darkness was profound, as 
was the silence. About two o 'clock the 
cold grew intense. A man came singing 
along with the bells on his mule jingling, 
and his heavy steps resounding on the 
flinty road. The moon, as I looked 
through a chink in the board shutter, was 
brilliant. I did not know whether to 
think of him as just going forth to his 
day's toil, or just coming back from it. 
In either case I felt sure he would not 
have sung so lustily if he had had an evil 
conscience, and I was grateful that he 
did not push open the door, to which 
there was no bolt or lock, and help him- 
self to a few of the pesetas in my purse, 

no 



IN THE MALAGA MOUNTAINS 

which would have saved him many weeks 
of hard work and given him much re- 
pose. 

Our breakfast was taken under many 
difficulties, and our luncheon was not 
more happy. While there were goats and 
pigs around our table in the Venta, there 
were cats and hens perching on it and 
on us in the cottage. Later, we went to 
ride on donkeys, and inspected a villa for 
the summer, far down in the valley. It 
was fascinating, with its terraces and cy- 
presses and olive orchards, but too low, 
the road leading to it frightfully steep, 
and the price charged for it exorbitantly 
high. The price, the man said, was two 
pesetas a day. That, we recognized by a 
gleam in his eye, was only the asking 
price. It could no doubt have been got 
for a peseta a day, and a civil guard or 
two thrown in. But I do not like to be 
in a valley when there is a mountain-top 
where I might be, and I concluded not to 
spend the summer there. 

in 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

" There be women fair as she 
Whose verbs and nouns do more agree." 

Switzerland, though less of an experi- 
ence, has the advantage of more cleanli- 
ness and convenience. And though one 
would sacrifice a good deal to be where 
the blue Mediterranean and the white 
Sierras meet, optically, it is good not to 
be unclean, and it is better not to be 
starved, and it is best not to be " mur- 
dered and kidnapped and sold for a slave," 
as sometimes is said to happen in this 
land of Andalusia. 

112 



XII 

BEHIND THE SCENES IN THE MALAGA 
BULL-RING 

The dust lay thick on the properties 
of the bull-ring in Malaga, the March 
day on which we went through it. As 
the bulls do not fight their best till the 
spring fires their blood, it is generally 
late April or early May when they are 
brought from their wide sunny pastures 
to be penned in the dark toril for a 
night and a day before they are let loose 
in the arena. They are driven in by 
night from the farm where they are bred, 
a few miles out of the city. I am told 
by people who live in the Cal6ta (the 
pretty suburb of Malaga, where by the 
sea are many charming villas) that it is 
quite a thrilling sensation to hear, in the 

113 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

dead of night, the ringing of the bells 
that announce the approach of the bulls 
for the next day's fight. First, far in 
advance of the cortege, come men on 
horseback, carrying torches and ringing 
bells, to clear the way and to warn of 
danger. Then on a wild gallop come the 
bulls, — each one guarded on either side 
by a tame bull, — detachments of mounted 
picadores flanking them. The rushing 
cavalcade, the ringing of the bells, the 
torches flaring in the darkness, the shak- 
ing of the ground under the many rapid- 
beating hoofs, they tell me, is quite dra- 
matic. When the bull-ring is reached, — 
it stands beside the sea, just outside the 
city limits, — there are fences which con- 
tract gradually up to the gate that leads 
into the toril. The wild creatures find 
their midnight gallop suddenly ended at 
this converging barrier. There is rarely 
any trouble in getting them in, I believe, 
for their guardians, the tame bulls, exert 
the same influence over them that shep- 

114 



THE MALAGA BULL-RING 

herd dogs do over the flocks they guard. 
The intelligence of these animals is won- 
derful, and the submission of the untamed 
brutes of the mountains no less so. In 
the rare cases when a bull has to be 
brought out of the arena, or when any- 
thing has gone wrong in the ring, one of 
these bulls will trot in and bring its re- 
fractory charge off the field in the "gen- 
tly firm" manner recommended by Miss 
Edgeworth. He seems to need only a 
cap and an apron to look an old bonne 
sent to bring a kicking, mutinous child 
back to the nursery. It is a pity that 
such intelligence should be slaughtered 
in the shambles or sacrificed in the ring ; 
for I suppose tame bulls and wild ones 
are recruited from the same ranks and 
are capable of the same education. 

Once in the toril, they must be incar- 
cerated in their several cells, and this I 
should think would be the least easy part 
of the programme. There are eight cells, 
perfectly dark but for a small latticed 

115 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

trap at the top. Through this, which 
opens on the bridge above, their keepers 
deal with them at a safe distance, after 
they are got in. The door of each is 
opened by a rope when his hour of fate 
has struck and he is to be loosed into 
the ring. From this bridge the keepers 
let down his food during the night and 
day that he is in his " condemned cell ; " 
and from here, reaching down, they 
plunge into him the cruel long dart bear- 
ing a gay flaunting rosette which is to 
decorate him for his debut, and to pique 
him into greater vivacity when he makes 
his entree. I fancy the rosette is just 
now out of fashion : it is perhaps as bad 
form for a bull to wear a rosette as it 
was a few years ago for a girl to wear 
a necklace. None of the bulls I saw at 
Seville a month later had rosettes ; and a 
Seville bull is the glass of fashion and the 
mould of form. 

We saw the many stalls for the poor 
doomed horses, and the infirmaries for 

116 



THE MALAGA BULL-RING 

the wounded ones who have escaped 
death at the horns of the bull in their 
first encounter, and who are being nursed 
up for a second, and it is to be hoped 
final one. For the managers are thrifty, 
and use up every shred of horseflesh left 
over from fight to fight. Therefore, it is 
best for the poor beast to be dead and 
done with it, when once he is enlisted. 
We went also through the many rooms 
in which the properties are kept. The 
plumed hats of the picadors were dusty 
and shabby, and I hope were renovated 
before the season opened ; the ponderous 
saddles and the armor of the picadors 
were hanging in dusty rows from the 
walls. The weight of one stirrup was as 
much as I could lift ; the spears were like 
Goliath's, each heavy as a weaver's beam. 
I scarcely remember all the paraphernalia 
we saw, roomful after roomful. After- 
ward we went to the hospital on the 
first floor, with its sickening array of cot- 
beds and medicine-chests and stretchers. 

117 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

Except that human nature gets used to 
everything, I should think it would take 
the heart out of all the actors on the 
scene, to see this preparation for the 
possible. 

But there was one provision that 
touched me very much : it was the 
chapel. A chapel in a bull-ring ! — what 
could be more incongruous ? And yet 
when one comes to think of it, what 
could be more humane, more Christian, 
if you will ? The Catholic Church does 
all it can to suppress the bull-ring ; it has 
a distinct quarrel with it. Any priest in 
Spain attending a bull-fight does it un- 
der penalty of excommunication. He is 
willfully committing a mortal sin. The 
best and most devout of the Catholic 
laity absolutely refuse to assist at these 
brutal scenes. But the multitude, the 
careless, the go-as-near-to-perdition-as- 
you-can-and-be-saved multitude go, and 
will go till Spain ceases to be Spain and 
the world is made over. The Church 

118 



THE MALAGA BULL-RING 

knows this, and might as well issue an 
edict against earthquakes as against bull- 
fights. But she yearns over these poor 
small-souled children of hers, and with a 
motherly care provides for them what 
she can of eternal safety. There shall 
always be a priest in attendance behind 
the scene at every bull-fight, to absolve 
the dying, to administer the last rites, to 
say a word of hope, to hear a word of re- 
pentance. One remembers the hopeful 
epitaph on the tomb of the fox-hunting 
squire cut off in his sins : — 

" Between the stirrup and the ground 
He mercy sought and mercy found." 

I suppose the same charitable hope 
may cover the Andalusian as the Anglo- 
Saxon pleasure-seeker. 

I wanted to go through the chapel, 
into which I could only look from the 
staircase leading along the bridge above 
the toril to the infirmary. The keeper, 
however, tried the door and found it 
locked. The chaplain, he said, had the 

119 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

key. It was but a poor sort of place, 
looking down from the stairway. There 
was a wooden altar, now bare of every- 
thing, and above it, in a ruddy haze, the 
fair face of the Blessed Virgin shone 
through a transparency. Poor wounded, 
careless-liver, brought in bleeding from 
the arena to breathe his last breath here, 
how that face would shine upon him 
from his far-past innocent youth ; how 
the " church-blest things " about him 
would bring back days of first commun- 
ion and confirmation and his mother's 
knee ! Perhaps the time between those 
happy days and this awful last one may 
not have been so very sinful as it looks 
to us, virtuous men and women of a 
more enlightened sphere. There may be 
good-living toreadors, perhaps, according 
to their lights, and salvable picadors, it is 
even possible. Heredity and surround- 
ings count for a great deal in a world 
where not more than one in sixty thou- 
sand lives up to his highest possibility. 

120 



THE MALAGA BULL-RING 

The Church, like a faithful mother 
whose wayward son roams nightly in for- 
bidden ways, waits up for him and trims 
the waning lamp and says her prayers, 
and very often is rewarded by receiving 
him into her arms at the eleventh hour. 
Whatever other faults we may find with 
Rome, we cannot say that she is narrow 
in the limits that she sets to the eternal 
mercy. Not even the Universalists them- 
selves, it seems to me, give wider hope. 
To the charity of alms, she adds the 
charity of prayers, — and prayers that 
seem to have no end, through hungry 
generation after hungry generation : — 

" Like circles widening round upon a clear blue river 
Age after age the wondrous sound is echoed on forever ; " 

prayers of saints that can never have an 
end, till all the world is redeemed and 
gathered about the feet of God. She 
only seems to shut out from hope the 
determinedly impenitent, the willful sin- 
ners, the lost ones who curse God and 
die, — who with intention and without 

121 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

excuse refuse God's mercy through life 
and at death. Masses upon Masses she 
says for the Protestant dead ; hours upon 
hours her monks and nuns pray before 
the altar for the world that will not pray 
for itself ; confraternities that count their 
members by the million offer daily inter- 
cessions for the eternal safety of the 
careless ones who say no prayers at all, 
and for the blinded ones whose prayers 
she thinks have not reached far enough. 

The chaplain of the bull-ring perhaps 
might have told me some interesting 
things, but I did not meet him, and I 
could only speculate about his experi- 
ences with the victims of the national 
sport. In the old days, when it was a 
nobler one, Mass was said before every 
fight, and all who were to be exposed to 
danger assisted at it. That of course is 
forbidden now, for of nothing is the 
Church more careful than of any profa- 
nation of the Blessed Sacrament. 

122 



XIII 

A SPANISH MILK-ROUTE 

Every morning while I was at the 
convent I heard the tinkle of cow-bells 
under my window, and at last I had 
the curiosity to look out, and through 
the bars I saw the way they deliver milk 
in Andalusia. A slow procession of three 
men, two cows and two calves, winds up 
the road bordered by eucalyptus and palm 
and orange trees, and stops before the 
great door of the convent. A white-veiled 
lay-sister comes out with her pitcher, and 
into it is delivered, in quantity required, 
and direct from the source, that which a 
bountiful Providence designed for the 
nourishment of the defrauded calves. 
Their resentment must be great, as they 
hear the milky stream buzzing into the 

123 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

convent pitcher. It seems an unnecessary 
cruelty to bring them. They have little 
straw muzzles over their mouths, and they 
are tied with ropes, each to the tail of its 
mother. The cows have ropes around 
their necks, and are led by the men. 
When the deliberate business is over, a 
few centimes are put into the hand of one 
of the men, the sister eyes critically the 
fluid in the pitcher, the convent door 
closes, and the procession winds its slow 
length down between the trees and out 
at the convent gate to serve milk to the 
next patron on the route. The men look 
as if they were not much more specula- 
tive than the cows ; the cows have a 
treadmill, middle-aged, rather careworn, 
though patient look. 

The calves had to me a sullen and 
resentful expression. One was an infant 
bull with a strong head and a marked 
personality of his own, and you wondered 
if he were not destined some day to draw 
the plaudits of an Andalusian crowd in 

124 



A SPANISH MILK-ROUTE 

the bull-ring that you could see from the 
hill in the convent garden. The other 
was only a little " common garden " red 
cow, who would probably amount to no- 
thing more distinguished than the prima- 
donna of a strolling company like the 
present ; but they both had the look of 
youthful resistance to monotony and bond- 
age, not to say short commons. 

There is something to commend in the 
Spanish method. The consumer gets pure 
milk, and the tinkle of a cow-bell is less 
offensive than a war-whoop at the base- 
ment door before dawn, and the rattle 
of milk- carts over the stony streets from 
four to eight A. m. For the producer 
there is also something to be said. If 
the " route " clears a peseta a day (twenty 
cents) it is probably considered a pay- 
ing concern. In a country where a good 
laborer can only earn seven reals (thirty- 
five cents) a day, the ground would be 
strewn with corpses if he could not sup- 
port his family on that amount of money. 

125 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

The ground is not strewn with corpses, 
so he must do it. It is perhaps well to 
be satisfied with a peseta a day profit in 
a climate where a diurnal tomato, a bunch 
of raisins, and a lump of sour bread will 
support life. The adulteration of milk, 
and consequently of conscience, is pre- 
vented. Life is sweet, but it is also 
short. What does it matter whether a 
man leaves his children an inheritance to 
be taxed, and perhaps fought over, or 
only an air to breathe and a faith that 

" The saints will hear if men will call, 

For the blue sky bends over all." 

And the sky that bends over southern 
Spain seems always blue, and there is a 
saint, I should think, for every hour in 
every day. 

126 



XIV 

BLOOD POWER 

As I was waiting one day in a cab 
before a friend's house, I noticed a man 
come out of a hallway near, struggling 
with the weight of a heavy trunk which 
two women were helping him to drag out 
to the doorstep. It was an enormous 
trunk, and must have been very full, for 
even our driver, who was not above beat- 
ing his horse and swearing at people who 
got in his way, shook his head and groaned 
as he looked at it, and got off his box and 
bore a hand in lifting it up on the man's 
shoulders. The man first put a strap 
around his forehead, to which was at- 
tached, at the two ends, a sort of hassock 
or cushion which rested on his neck. 
The trunk, with great effort of the two 

127 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

maids and the cabman, and the porter 
himself, was raised into position, while he 
bent his body almost double. His face, 
as I caught sight of it under the trunk, 
was very red. He started off in a stag- 
gering way, but after a little his pace 
steadied, and he went along quickly as 
far as I could see him. I was impressed 
by the sight, but there are so many im- 
pressive sights in Spanish streets that 
I acknowledge I forgot about him after 
he turned the corner. We drove to 
the Bishop's Palace, and while we were 
waiting at the door to know if his Grace 
would receive us, the poor man with the 
trunk on his bowed back passed us again. 
It was certainly fifteen minutes since we 
had seen him start with his load ; it had 
taken us ten to drive the distance, and it 
would be at a brisk pace that it could be 
accomplished on foot in fifteen, but it was 
rather a downhill road. He did not go 
fast now, and there was a suspicion of 
unsteadiness in his gait. His face had 

128 



BLOOD POWER 

turned from red to purple. He disap- 
peared down a narrow street, and I never 
saw him again. 

After that day I watched the poor 
beasts of burden with interest. They 
have stands like the cabmen, where you 
can always find one. They sit on their 
little stuffed cushions when out of work, 
and do not look discontented. I find they 
are employed in moving furniture. One 
Sunday a family was in the act of demt- 
nagement as I came from church ; they 
were leaving a house in the Caleta for 
one in town, and we met their various 
articles of furniture walking along the 
Cortina del Muelle in a dtgage manner ; 
here a washstand, there a dressing-table, 
and there again a pile of four or five well- 
packed drawers covered with napkins, and 
carefully balanced. 

But the thing I liked least was a huge 
wardrobe which " with lagging step and 
slow," brought up the rear. 

There are never by any chance two 
129 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

men tackling the same load, so I take it 
these express companies are limited, and 
there are no partnerships. It may be a 
profitable calling, as profits go in Spain. 
The license cannot cost much, neither 
can the hassock, et voila ! your plant. 
For everybody has to have clothes, and 
they cannot be reckoned as outlay ; neither 
can a shelter for your head at night. All 
outside the hassock and the license is 
clear profit. There is probably a good 
deal of competition, for there are plenty 
of horses such as they are, and donkeys 
and mules abound. What we call " horse 
power," the Spanish call " blood power." 
I suppose they do not 'reckon their bro- 
thers' blood in with the other sorts, — 
horse and mule and donkey. 

130 



XV 

AN ANDALUSIAN COOK 

Pilar was a young peasant woman. I 
do not know from what village she came, 
somewhere in the neighborhood of Mal- 
aga. She was paid three dollars a month, 
and she " found " herself. A chef in 
that happy land gets five dollars a month, 
but times were bad, and my friends had 
had for three years to content themselves 
with a woman cook. She cooked well, 
though, and cheerfully, and she prepared 
more meals in the twenty-four hours than 
any other cook I ever heard of. The 
children of the household were of various 
ages and sexes, and went to various 
schools, and needed their meals at sepa- 
rate hours. To be sure, the master of 
the house was keeping a strict Lent that 

131 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

year, and only ate one meal a day, but 
that had to be in the middle of it, conse- 
quently it had to be cooked and served 
alone. Madame was delicate, and not 
only could not fast, but had to have very 
good and very nourishing food, and to 
have it very often during the day. There 
was room for no Spanish procrastination, 
I am sure, in Pilar's kitchen, but there 
must have been plenty of bonne volonte. 

She seemed to have identified herself 
thoroughly with the family, and to work 
with a zealous love for them all. There 
was, however, one of the many children 
for whom she had a special affection, a 
very delicate little maiden of two and a 
half. During the autumn this child had 
been desperately ill. The doctors gave no 
hope. Pilar in anguish prayed for her 
recovery, and promised the Bestower of 
life that if He would spare little Anita, 
she would, before the end of Holy Week, 
carry to the shrine on the top of the 
"Calvary" outside the town, one pound 

132 



AN ANDALUSIAN COOK 

of olive oil to be burned in His honor. 
She promised a great many prayers be- 
side, which she managed to get said, in 
the intervals of her frying and stewing 
and boiling. 

Well, the little girl, contrary to the 
doctors, began to mend, and finally was 
entirely restored to health. Pilar was 
most grateful, and said many Aves in 
thanksgiving. The winter was a busy 
one, and then Lent came and seemed no 
less busy in that big household. Pilar 
did not forget the pound of oil, but there 
never seemed a moment when she could 
ask a half day to go and carry it to the 
shrine. Holy Week came, Monday, 
Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, — what 
should she do ! She could scarcely get 
away from her work even to go out to her 
parish church on Holy Thursday, to say 
a little prayer before the Repository 
where, throned in flowers and lighted 
with myriad candles, the Blessed Sacra- 
ment is kept till the morning of Good 
133 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

Friday. As to going to seven churches 
and saying her prayers before each Repos- 
itory as other people did, that, alas ! was 
not "for the likes of her." She had a 
dumb deep-down feeling, however, that 
the good God knew, and that it would be 
all right. On her way back from her 
hurried prayer at the church, a procession 
passed which she watched for a moment. 
But this only proved painful, for it had 
begun to rain, and her pious southern 
soul was aflame with wrath that the 
image of the Blessed Redeemer should be 
exposed to the storm. 

"They don't care about wetting his 
dear curls," she cried, " as long as they 
can have a good procession." 

She shook her fist at the crowd, and 
came away in tears. Her mistress, a 
devout Catholic, tried to console her by 
reminding her that, after all, it was only 
an image and not the dear Lord she 
loved. Oh, she knew that; but it was 
cruel, but it was shameful ! She felt as a 

i34 



AN ANDALUSIAN COOK 

mother would feel if the dress of her dead 
baby, or its little half-worn shoe were 
spoiled by the caprice or cold-heartedness 
of some one who had no feeling for it. 
Altogether Holy Thursday was not very 
consoling to Pilar, and the pound of oil 
grew heavier every hour. 

The next day, Good Friday, she had 
only time to go to church through the 
silent streets, where no wheels were 
heard, and say her prayers and look at 
the black, black altars and the veiled 
statues. That night, after her work was 
done, and the last baby had been served 
with its last porridge, she put her kitchen 
in hurried order, and stole out silently. 
She had bought the pound of oil at a 
little shop in the next street and, hiding 
it under her shawl, turned her steps 
towards Barcenillas. 

The night was black and tempestuous. 
A hot dry wind blew; occasionally a 
gust brought a few drops of rain, but 
more often it was only a roaring gale 

i35 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

which made the street-lamps blink, and 
whirled the dust around her. It was a 
long way to the suburb ; it was late ; 
there were few abroad, But no matter, 
the good Lord knew why she was out, 
and He would take care of her. 

There are no trams running in the 
days of Holy Week. From Holy Thurs- 
day till after the cathedral bells ring for 
first vespers on Holy Saturday, no horse 
is taken out of its stall, no wheels move 
in the streets of Malaga. It was nearly 
midnight when she got to Barcenillas. 
She crossed the silent plaza, passed 
through the gate, and began the ascent 
of the steep hill. There is a great broad 
road that winds up it, and at every " sta- 
tion " there is a lamp burning. She knelt 
at each as she reached it. But the place 
was very lonely ; the eucalyptus trees 
shook and whispered to each other, and 
the lamps were dim and flickered in the 
rough wind. The night before there had 
been processions all through the night, 

136 



AN ANDALUSIAN COOK 

crowds upon crowds going up the hill; 
she would not have been lonely then. 
But she could not get away, because of 
little Josef's being ill and needing the 
water heated for his bath every hour. 
Yes, it would have been nicer last night, 
with all the priests, and all the chanting, 
and all the flaming torches. But the 
good God knew all about it, — why she 
did not come then, when she wanted to, — 
and why she came now, when she was 
afraid, and almost did not want to. Not 
that exactly ; she did want to, — only — 
oh, but then He knew; she would not 
worry, but she said her prayers with 
chattering teeth, and many furtive looks 
behind her. 

At last she reached the summit, where 
in a little chapel burned the light that 
could be seen for miles around Malaga. 
There a solitary brother knelt, saying his 
beads and keeping watch. She said her 
last prayers at the altar, and left the 
votive oil with the friar, who commended 

i37 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

her piety and was very kind. As she came 
out, the clouds broke and the Paschal 
moon shone through them, and the broad 
road led down with smooth ease towards 
the sleeping, silent city. Her steps made 
just as lonely echoes on the stones of the 
deserted streets, but she felt herself 
favored of heaven, as no doubt she was, 
and all her fears were gone. 

It was after three o'clock when she let 
herself in at the kitchen door ; and it was 
several weeks before her mistress learned, 
by accident, of the dolorous little pilgrim- 
age. 

138 



XVI 

Malaga's bishop 

The cathedral stands in a cluttered 
sort of square. The old mosque that 
once occupied the spot was turned into 
a Gothic church. Nothing of that re- 
mains but the portal of the Sagrario, 
very beautiful by contrast with the rest 
of the building. The plans were drawn 
(probably by Diego de Siloe) in 1528, but 
there have been a great many lions in the 
path of its completion, including that most 
august of destroyers, an earthquake. In 
fact, it is still unfinished, and its altered 
plans have made it mongrel and unsatis- 
factory as a whole. It is huge, but big- 
ness alone is not beauty. However, it is 
solemn and vast, and it is beloved of the 
people. All day they come straggling in 

i39 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

to say their prayers. Sometimes you will 
meet a group of brown and ragged fisher- 
men, redolent of their calling, who have 
come in from the near-by beach to give 
thanks for a good haul of fish, or to ask 
preservation during the darkness of the 
approaching night at sea. You see 
them kneeling, one at this altar, another 
at that, with serious and devout mien. 

Or there comes in alone at one of the 
great doors a quiet little child of five or 
six, with a straight cotton skirt down to 
her shoes, and a round old-womanish waist, 
a handkerchief tied over her head, her 
beads dangling from her tiny hands. She 
stands on tiptoe to dip her finger in the 
big btnitier, crosses herself, and genu- 
flects, and then with sedate intelligence 
and a sweet piety makes her way across 
the vast marble spaces to the altars that 
she loves best, and says a prayer now at 
this one, now at that. 

Sometimes a couple of boys rush in 
pell-mell from their play. As they enter, 

140 



MALAGA'S BISHOP 

their faces grow serious, their bearing de- 
corous. They do not say many prayers, 
boys do not as a rule, but they are proba- 
bly none the worse for the breathing- 
space, and the bent knee, and the little 
decorum. As they go out at another door 
across the great stretch of worn marble 
pavement, there is not any relaxing of 
the tension till the heavy curtain falls 
behind them ; and then, down the huge 
flight of steps into the plaza, you hear a 
clattering of feet and a wild whoop, as 
they return to the world after their brief 
trajet across the consecrated precincts. 
It is not the fear of punishment ; nobody 
would "do anything' ' to them if they 
rioted in the sacred place. Spanish tenue 
is very lax in things ecclesiastic, as it is 
in most matters, — a light robe hanging 
loosely as befits the climate. But the 
love of God even more than the fear of 
Him is deeply rooted in the being of 
these children of the south. 

It is pretty to see them pressing up 
141 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

to the side altars where low mass is be- 
ing said; no music, no incense, nothing 
to attract them specially. They sit and 
kneel on the very steps ; one would think 
the priest would have to brush them 
away. It is not " mummery " to them 
either. You will see them slip down on 
their knees before the bell rings at the 
" Sanctus," showing they have been fol- 
lowing every word of the mass. It is 
touching to see them bow their little 
dark heads and cross themselves, when 
at the end of mass the priest gives the 
blessing. They kneel on while he says 
the brief "prayers after mass," and re- 
spond in childish treble to his 

" Pray for us, O holy Mother of God,"— 
" That we may become worthy of the 
promises of Christ." 

You almost feel sure that they are 
worthy of the promises of Christ, and in 
a fair way to enter into the kingdom 
shut against all who do not become as 
little children. 

142 



MALAGA'S BISHOP 

And there are old men and women, 
emaciated, ragged, wan, sitting on pave- 
ment or step, or dozing by the gate of 
the choir. The Andalusian poor have 
no firesides ; but what they lack in fire- 
sides they make up in altars ; the altar 
is their fireside. 

Across the square is the bishop's pal- 
ace. It is neither impressive nor inter- 
esting except as being the home of a 
very saintly man. All the people of 
Malaga, foes to the church as well as its 
friends, spoke in praise of this good man. 
He was a marques, the head of his family 
and the inheritor of a large fortune. All 
this he laid down ; another man took his 
title and place, and entered into the en- 
joyment of his houses and lands when 
he became an humble, nameless priest. 
Out of that position of obscurity, his 
sanctity and his marked ability after 
some years raised him to the hierarchy. 
He preached the Advent and the Lent 
in the cathedral that year we were in 

i43 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

Malaga. The Lenten subject was "The 
Catholic in the Modern World," or some- 
thing like that. The up-to-date-ness of 
the incisive, deep discourse was very 
striking, as well as the hushed silence 
of the crowded vast cathedral. The ser- 
mon was an hour long ; no one seemed 
to wish it shorter. 

We heard a good deal, too, about his 
charities. That winter was a hard one 
in Malaga; the poverty was direr than 
ever before. The bishop gave up his 
carriage and gave the money to the poor, 
and went about on his many ways in the 
rattling old cabs of the city. I have 
more than once seen him in the selfsame 
broken-springed, battered old hack which 
we ordinarily used, with a driver much 
too big for it, who had a red face and 
a habit of swirling his whip about un- 
necessarily. I hope he curbed this in- 
clination when he had his Grace for a 
fare. 

One saw that economy ruled at the 
144 



MALAGA'S BISHOP 

palace ; everything that could be spared, 
people said, was given to the poor. It 
was bare, but clean, — so clean, the floors 
and windows seemed always being washed. 
In the court by which you entered there 
were several palms in green tubs, — plain 
tubs, no illusion. It was evident the 
good bishop did not give much thought 
to the decoration of his abode. There 
was one room, however, into which we 
were taken once, that looked as if it had 
had some thought and care bestowed 
upon it. It had a warm, furnished look, 
and the high windows opened upon a 
garden where flowers ran riot, as they do 
in Spain. The bishop's mother, old and 
feeble, lived with him, and his care for 
and devotion to her were as edifying as 
his charities or his austerities or any 
other of his virtues. I should judge 
that the state which his position called 
for was rather irksome to him, but as a 
true Spaniard he felt he ought to be 
punctilious in matters of etiquette. He 

H5 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

was in spiritual affairs, however, at every- 
body's beck and call, just as if he were 
not a high dignitary. There was, in 
Malaga, no priest who could hear confes- 
sions in English, and only two who could 
hear them in French, and one of these 
two was the bishop. So all the strag- 
gling foreigners who came to Malaga 
climbed up the great bare palace stairs 
and rang his bell and asked to be shriven, 
just as if he had not been his Grace. He 
always had a patient, gentle expression, 
as if he said, " Oh, don't mind, it 's what 
I 'm here for." Orphanages, sisterhoods, 
all the myriad charities of the suffering 
city, were under his care, and called him 
father, and were pretty exacting children 
sometimes, I have heard. 

Something connected with one of his 
official duties as bishop interested me, 
as showing his self-forgetfulness and 
piety. Once, some revolution accom- 
panied by acts of a more than usually 
blasphemous and sacrilegious character 

146 



MALAGA'S BISHOP 

had made it necessary that all the altar- 
stones in the city should be reconsecrated. 
The ceremony of consecration — which 
is never intended to be renewed, but is 
ordinarily done once and forever — is 
of great length and of stringently exact 
detail. The laity do not assist at it. 
The bishop who consecrates must fast 
the day before, i. e., eat but one meal, 
and that at midday. Of course, on the 
day of consecration, he does not taste 
food or drink till the ceremonies are 
over. On this day the consecration of 
the first stone began in the very early 
morning, perhaps not long after dawn. 
At six in the evening, the last one was 
begun, and it was nearly nine o'clock 
when the bishop got home and first 
tasted food. He seemed quite to have 
forgotten the hour till he saw how fagged 
and worn the assisting priests looked. 
They were not fasting, but the long and 
rigorous service alone had exhausted 
them. He was contrite and self-re- 

i47 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

proachful that he had not more consid- 
ered them. Certainly fifteen or sixteen 
hours of continuous mental effort are 
rather a tax anywhere, but in limp and 
soft Andalusia it is almost an incredible 
strain. 

This was the only Spanish bishop I 
knew, but I have rather come to believe, 
since I have read an Essay of Cardinal 
Wiseman's on Spain, 1 that he was only 
one of many, and a fair sample of the 
rest. 

1 " Essay on Spain," vol. v. of Works of Cardinal Wise- 
man. (P. O'Shea, New York, 1876.) If any one reading 
these superficial and hurried sketches should, by this 
allusion, be led to look up the volume mentioned, and 
read it, I should feel that my little book had an excuse for 
being, which otherwise I have doubted. 

148 



XVII 

Malaga's manners 

In the matter of manners, we found 
there were many points of difference 
from ours. The women do not shriek 
and shrill as ours do, but they are not as 
soft-voiced as the English, who breathe 
perpetual fog ; nor as piercingly swift 
in the flight of their words as the French. 
Their language, however, is softer than 
their voices ; they make a good deal of 
noise when they are massed. 

The names of the women testify the 
devotion of the land to the Mater Dei, 
— la tierra de Maria Santisima. All 
possible turns and twists are given to it, 
but it must be Maria, Maria, somehow 
Maria, most often with the Maria sunk 
in the particular mystery. Maria de las 

149 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

Angustias (our Lady of Anguish), Marfa 
de la Concepcion, Maria Inmaculata, 
Maria de Dolores, Maria del Pilar, Maria 
del Piedad, one meets familiarly as An- 
gustia, Concha, Conchita, Inmaculata, 
Dolores, Pilar, Piedad, and so on. In 
fact, in any class or family it is rather 
rare to meet with girls whose names do 
not suggest the devotion of the land. 
St. Joseph naturally shares with her in 
the affections of the household and gives 
an extra variation or two. Josefina is 
but one remove from Maria, and most 
of the boys have Jose if not Maria in 
their names. It is very pretty and wins 
rather than repels, as you get a little 
into the heart of the Spanish household. 
All the Marias and all the Joses, it is 
true, do not reflect honor on their patron 
saints, but neither do the Washingtons 
of our native land always turn out to be 
patriots. "He shoots higher who aims 
at the moon than he who only threatens 
a tree," and it seems better to have a 

150 



MALAGA'S MANNERS 

pious thought for your child, and to set 
before it a lofty model than to get it 
a name out of a novel, and to set it no 
model at all. 

It is difficult to tighten the Spanish up 
into any very formal social life. There 
is always a tendency to soften down into 
amiability and ease. They have strict 
rules of etiquette, but they slur them 
over as soon as they get to know you. 

There is one point, however, to which 
they hold tenaciously, and that is the 
length and depth of their mourning. 
Little children as young as three and 
four we saw were put in black, not only 
for parents and brothers and sisters, but 
for aunts and uncles. Half the children 
in Malaga looked as if they had been 
dipped in ink-bottles. Their bereaved 
elders wore the blackest black, the men 
as well as the women. The latter wore 
long black veils of a sort of soft grena- 
dine, pinned on the hair instead of the 
ordinary lace mantilla. There is really 

151 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

a sentiment in the gloom and droop of 
this, — a contrast to the ornate and ugly- 
French deuil> crowned with be-feathered 
hats carrying long crape pennants of woe 
floating in the breeze, or, failing breeze, 
dragging to the ground. The Malaga 
woman wears plain and sad clothes, and 
her veil falls as if she mourned. In fact 
she does mourn, and her clothes are the 
true expression of what she feels. They 
are as a nation strong in their affections 
and constant. Family life is united and 
satisfying ; it means a good deal to them 
when death breaks it. The French dec- 
orate their grieving garb, and the English 
scarcely wear theirs at all ; the one race 
are too vivacious, and the other too 
healthy to mourn their dead as long as 
pensive and pious Spain. 

But the custom falls into the grotesque 
when a young girl comes down to receive 
you, three years after her father's death, 
pulling on a pair of long black gloves, 
and when a recent widower leaves at 

152 



MALAGA'S MANNERS 

your door a card as black as night. I 
have one before me now; it disdains 
borders ; the face of the card is all black, 
the name and the address are in thin 
white text. It is very startling. 

Visiting is also sharply restricted after 
a death. The family, to the remotest 
branches, are expected to seclude them- 
selves absolutely for a month ; after that, 
there are innumerable grades of detach- 
ment from the world, or gradual resump- 
tion of its pleasures, according to the 
degree of kinship. 

If their manner of mourning is dis- 
tinctive, their festal mode strikes one as 
not less so. If you get an informal note 
of invitation that winds up like this : 

De V. At S. S. 
Q. B. S. M. 

and then, beneath, your friend's (male 
friend's) name, it means that he is your 
devoted servant who kisses your hand, 
after having invited you to "this your 
house," at such an hour on such a day. 

i53 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

If you accepted his invitation and visited 
him for the first time, he would ceremo- 
niously welcome you to his house, which 
he would thenceforth allude to as your 
house, and would invariably style him- 
self your servant. Then of course he 
offers you anything among his posses- 
sions that you may admire. But no less 
"of course" you must not take it. He 
would inwardly be sadly disturbed if you 
did, but outwardly he would bear the 
bereavement with grave Spanish dignity. 

If a young girl met at an evening 
entertainment a young man whom she 
liked, she would flutter across the room 
to her father and whisper, " Go and offer 
him the house, papa, quick, quick, before 
he goes away." Of course she cannot 
offer it herself ; she would die rather, 
which is quite to her credit. 

There are many little odds and ends 
of habits of speech which are graceful. 
You apologize to the beggar to whom 
you refuse an alms, "Forgive me for 

iS4 



MALAGA'S MANNERS 

God's sake, my brother." If you ask 
a little boy his name, he will answer, 
" Juan," or Valentin, or whatever it may 
be, "to serve God and you." When 
you meet a man whom you know in the 
street, he takes off his hat and says, " At 
your feet, madame." 

Their hospitality is frank and gener- 
ous ; at the same time, if it is any gene 
to them, they will not, for mere good 
manners, do much for you. If they have 
taken a fancy to you, or are sorry for 
you, they cannot do too much. I saw 
the most unbounded hospitality shown 
to a young stranger whose mother had 
died suddenly while spending a month 
at one of the hotels. If she had been a 
sister, a child, she could not have been 
more tenderly cared for ; all homes were 
open to her to choose from. That she 
was not of their creed was no bar to 
their generous sympathy. 

Five o'clock tea has penetrated even 
to Malaga ; but it still is an exotic. Its 

i55 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

distinctive feature is the excess of deli- 
cious sweets, of which the men eat prod- 
igally. It would seem that young people 
could not meet together even at this 
hour without drifting away into a waltz, 
if there were any one to play for them. 
Or if there were no one to play, no piano, 
guitar, or zither, a thing inconceivable 
in a Spanish house, some child would be 
on hand to clap her castanets and dance 
the Malaquenas with grace and spirit. 
Once on the train going to Seville we 
were detained for a half hour, and some 
Malaga people whom we happened to 
know put their little girl of five on the 
seat of the compartment and made her 
dance the Cachucha to amuse us. The 
love of dancing seems to be more than 
a tradition with them, almost an inborn 
passion. 

I had expected to see among the char- 
acteristic things of the place the beauti- 
ful big pale green grapes which go here 
by the name of " Malaga grapes," but I 

156 



MALAGA'S MANNERS 

found they did not grow in Malaga at 
all. From the time I heard that, I lost 
my interest in its commerce, and though 
I was taken through acres of warehouses 
and furlongs of factories, they did not in- 
terest me at all. I came to see churches 
and convents and the strange life of the 
streets and the odd customs of society. 
"When I goes a-troutin', I goes a-trout- 
inY' and so I boldly flung back "the 
salmon " of Spanish commerce into the 
stream. I could see factories and ware- 
houses bigger and better at home. 

i57 



XVIII 

MATINAL 

Some early morning drives from the 
convent to the distant English church 
in the Caleta gave me glimpses that 
interested me, of the life of the lower 
classes in the city. The people looked 
tired and sleepy, and as if it were an 
effort to get the wheels of a new day in 
motion. They sat about on doorsteps 
in very scant clothing and yawned. The 
housewives carried little pans of food to 
the venders of artificial heat on the 
corners of the streets, who for an infini- 
tesimal coin cooked it for them on long- 
legged stoves which they wheeled about 
from square to square. In the better 
quarters cows were being led from door 
to door and milked to suit customers. 

158 



MATINAL 

Sometimes I passed through an old 
market-place, — that of San Pedro de Al- 
cantara. A church stands in the square 
opposite the shabby, ancient market ; on 
the steps of the church those peasants 
too poor to hire a stall in the market 
spread their wares for sale. Not only 
on the steps, but on the flags of the 
street were women sitting by the pathetic 
little store of things they had brought in 
from the country to sell, — some eggs, 
a speechless, melancholy hen, a pair of 
squawking, protesting ducks, a little heap 
of oranges, a basket of grapes, some 
bunches of onions and carrots. There 
were throngs of people passing in and 
out and making their purchases, all with 
a great deal of vociferation. One morn- 
ing, I saw on the steps of the church 
a plaintive-looking old woman hovering 
over her stock in trade. She looked 
hungry, anxious, pleading. It was so 
early I was sure her stock had not been 
depleted by sales : the stock was — three 

i59 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

tomatoes. Poor old being, — three toma- 
toes ! I wondered how many miles she 
had walked to bring them in. 

It was rather too early in the day for 
beggars ; at no time, however, are there 
very many in Malaga compared with towns 
more frequented by tourists. But there 
was one bright-eyed little boy who was 
always up betimes. He probably had 
some remote connection with Seville or 
Granada, and had heard what was to be 
got from foreigners. I had, though, only 
to make a horizontal sweep with my hand 
and say, " Forgive me, my brother/' and 
he would fall back with a merry little 
pout and a coaxing " Mariana ? " And 
" to-morrow " he would run after me, 
pleading again. 

It was rather an odd experience, when 
I arrived at the English church for this 
early service on Sundays and high days, 
to be in my own person, The Congrega- 
tion, but for the whole winter that hap- 
pened to me. There are said to be over 

1 60 



MATINAL 

three hundred English in Malaga, and 
this chapel is the only Protestant place 
of worship in the city, I was led to con- 
clude from this that Protestantism is not 
making great strides in Malaga, though 
the " Society for the Propagation of the 
Gospel in Foreign Parts " has rarely 
sent a better and more conscientious 
chaplain anywhere than there. At eleven 
o'clock there was a second service, to 
which thirty or forty people sometimes 
came. 

I remember another early morning 
church experience. A young American 
girl, a Catholic, who did not understand 
Spanish, wanted to make her confession 
before going away on a journey. I am 
sure there was not much on her soul, 
she was so pure and sweet, — only a lit- 
tle dust to be brushed away; but she 
wanted to go, et que voulez-vous ? The 
bishop was absent, and there was only 
one other priest in Malaga who knew 
French. So to him a young Spanish 

161 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

friend offered to lead her. It was a long 
way, and when they got to the church 
he was not at the altar, though it was his 
ordinary hour for saying mass. They 
looked at all the side altars ; he was not 
at any of them. It was an inconceivable 
situation ! The church was full, though 
it was not a fete day : a "blue Monday " 
if I remember right. They found a chair, 
and then the Spanish girl, with national 
vehemence, hurried to a lay-brother and 
told him it was insupportable, the father 
must come. It was impossible, the bro- 
ther said, he was in bed, he was threat- 
ened with pneumonia, he could not even 
say his mass that day. 

"No matter," she insisted with the 
cruelty of youth, "go and tell him the 
circumstances/ ' 

The morning was cold for Malaga, the 
great stone church was damp and chilly, 
and the priest was very delicate. He 
had probably been sent to the monastery 
in Malaga to preserve his very valuable 

162 



MATINAL 

life, for he was one of the best preachers 
in his order, and a most saintly man. 

The young American, meanwhile, was 
engrossed in her prayers and oblivious 
of what was going on. The monastery 
was on the other side of the street ; pre- 
sently the lay brother came back from 
it and said mournfully, " He will come," 
and the young Spaniard made her way 
through the worshipers and whispered 
to her kneeling friend with subdued tri- 
umph, "He will come." 

And after quarter of an hour, he came. 
He was a tall, thin man, hollow-chested 
and stooping, with a very pale face, deep- 
set dark eyes, and a patient look that 
seemed to say, like the bishop's, "Oh, 
don't mind, it 's what I 'm here for." 
We left Malaga the next day, and I 
never heard what that morning's chill 
did for him. 

Another matinal snap-shot. A narrow, 
precipitous alley. I do not know how we 
got to such a squalid, closed-in place. 

163 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

A priest came swinging by with rapid 
gait, probably on some sick-call ; he was 
absorbed in his thoughts and did not 
look to right or left. A group of nearly 
naked little children were sitting on the 
ground in the middle of the street, intent 
on some game. They did not look older 
than five or six. As the priest strode 
past they looked up, started to their feet, 
and ran lightly after him up the steep 
ascent, caught his hand, one after the 
other, and kissed it. He had not known 
they were there till he felt the touch of 
the warm little lips. He gave them a 
word of blessing and hurried on, and 
they turned back to their play with all 
seriousness, not even looking after him. 
It was all the work of a moment. 

164 



XIX 

IN THE SEVILLE BULL RING 

The Seville bull ring is over two hun- 
dred years old, very well built, and white- 
washed, like most things made by man's 
device in Spain. The bull-fight that I 
saw in Seville was, I believe, the best 
thing that Spain could do in the way of 
a bull-fight. It was the third and last 
day of the fair ; Seville is the social cen- 
tre of Spain ; the three days of the fair 
are the culmination of the social year in 
Seville, and the last fight is the culmina- 
tion of the fair. So, logically, it was the 
climax of a climax, and as such it was 
well to have been there, if one wanted to 
judge favorably of bull-fights. The day 
was perfect. April is the loveliest month 
in Seville, like early June at home; neither 

165 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

too hot nor too cold. The whole town 
was gay with the fair, and all the gayest 
of the crowd seemed pushing their way 
towards the Plaza de Toros with us. 
There were open carriages with black- 
eyed women in the traditional bull-fight 
dress, yellow satin trimmed with black 
chenille fringe and a mantilla of the 
same chenille on the head ; there were 
drags and dog-carts driven by Spanish 
elegants, and filled with the haute no- 
blesse of Seville; there were cabs with 
eager tourists in them ; there were trams 
stopping before the entrance and dis- 
gorging crowds of flushed and hurried 
heads of families, shepherding troops of 
little children in their holiday clothes ; 
there were dark peasants, oily mechanics, 
servant maids, hotel porters, pressing in 
at the gate where all have to enter, 
dividing, some above and some below, as 
indicated by the green or red or blue 
ticket that each held. There was a zeal 
about it all; the air and the sunshine 

166 



IN THE SEVILLE BULL RING 

even were zealous, the light breeze was 
full of anticipatory thrills. 

We struggled up to our places in one 
of the best boxes; we had felt keenly- 
afraid we were to be cheated out of it by 
some mysterious Spanish method. I do 
not know why, but travelers always are 
suspicious of the good faith of Spaniards, 
whereas generally I have found they are 
as dependable as other people who get 
their living out of the traveling public, — 
perhaps more so. Their methods are 
stupid, and they are hot-tempered and 
stubborn, but they seem to me honest. 

When we had got into our box and 
settled ourselves in our places, we looked 
around with delight. What a coup cTceil ! 
Imagine the vast white rim of the build- 
ing against a deep blue sky, and all 
the amphitheatre down to the barrier 
that shuts off the arena, ablaze with the 
color that goes to the clothing and the 
flesh of twelve thousand people; gay 
fans, parasols, dresses, hats, the white 

167 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

shirt fronts of men, the dark hair and 
pink cheeks of girls, — all with the slight 
movement and vibration of a living mass. 
And the great arena itself, what a glo- 
rious circle of color! It was a tawny, 
smooth ring of yellow sand of a rich and 
singular tint, brought from the neighbor- 
ing mountains. 

The wide, empty arena so resplen- 
dently colored, the massed brilliance of 
the throng that filled the amphitheatre 
from top to bottom, the white rim above 
that framed it, and over all the vivid blue 
of a cloudless sky, — struck me as un- 
approachably fine. No wonder that the 
Spaniard loves his bull-fight. So far it 
is to the credit of his eye and his taste 
that he does ; and one extends the credit 
a little further. The entrada is beautiful. 
When all are wrought up to the highest 
point of expectancy, the gates in the 
barrier opposite the royal box open, and 
the gayly trapped procession winds in. 
Men on horseback with plumed hats ; the 

168 



IN THE SEVILLE BULL RING 

matadores in their beautiful dresses ; the 
picadores, carrying spears, riding their 
blindfolded horses ; the gayly decorated 
mules, with their bells jangling; the 
troop of men who manage them, dressed 
in snow-white blouses, — all this cortege 
winds through the dark gateway, and 
delights the eyes of the throng by pass- 
ing two or three times around the ring. 
Then a horseman rides forward out of 
the procession, and with a deep obeisance 
pauses before the royal box and asks for 
the key of the toril. The key is thrown 
down to him, and he catches it in his 
plumed hat which he holds out. This 
is the sign for all to withdraw from the 
ring but those who are to take part in 
the baiting of the bull. The mules trot 
off, shaking their bells, followed by their 
running drivers ; the men on horseback 
withdraw, and the gates close behind 
them. 

There is a sensational silence. All 
eyes are fixed on the door of the toril, 

169 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

which differs in no way from the other 
doors of exit and entrance but by having 
a bull's head carved over it. A man 
goes up to it and unlocks it, and saves 
himself by jumping over the barrier as 
the wild creature rushes out from the 
dark cell in which he has been incarcer- 
ated for twenty-four hours. The door 
is quickly pulled shut from behind the 
barrier. Poor beast, he looks very be- 
wildered for a moment. He tosses up 
his head and gazes around, amazed at the 
strange scene and the glare of light. He 
catches sight of a picadore across the 
ring, sitting motionless on his blinded 
horse, always headed one way. All the 
side of the man toward the bull is plated 
with armor. It is a dastardly sort of 
business all through. The other side is 
never presented to the bull, nor does the 
bull have the least chance to get at it. 
He always goes straight for the horse 
with his head down, plunges his horns 
into the bowels of the creature and tosses 

170 



IN THE SEVILLE BULL RING 

him over. The chulas (the apprentices) 
then rush forward, and by waving flags 
before him draw off his attention from 
the prostrate horse and the picadore 
floundering in his heavy armor. A few 
moments, and this doughty knight is 
helped upon his legs, and if his horse 
is still alive and able to stand, he is put 
upon it and obliged to ride around the 
ring to be ready for another attack, as 
soon as the bull has dispatched the 
second horse, upon which he is now en- 
gaged. Something like fifteen minutes, 
I believe, is allotted to this part of the 
taurine drama. Some bulls do more 
rapid disemboweling than others, of 
course, but one may be sure the thrifty 
manager will never allow more than the 
allotted time for the slaughter of the 
horses he has bought and paid for. 
There were fourteen killed that day, 
and that was rather below the average. 

At the end of the fifteen minutes a 
bugle is sounded ; some of the picadores 

171 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

ride away on their surviving steeds ; 
those whose horses are killed limp away 
on their feet. The matadores saunter in, 
dainty in silk and velvet, — the chulas 
with their banderillas in their hands 
come forward, and then the bull takes 
his chance of five minutes more or less 
of life at the hands of these tormentors. 
One's sympathies are all with the horses 
in the first act, and with the bull in the 
second and third acts. The skill of the 
men is perfect, and their courage ad- 
mirable, but they are twelve to one, and 
brain thrown in. Poor bull ! he has but 
a sorry chance for the few minutes' longer 
existence that he fights for. He is 
doomed, but then fortunately he does not 
know it. We saw six killed that sunny 
April afternoon, — six splendid bulls, 
black and glossy, and with courage and 
intelligence that deserved a better fate. 

I said six splendid bulls. But no, only 
five were " splendid." One of the six was 
a failure. Such a failure as comes from 

172 



IN THE SEVILLE BULL RING 

not wanting to fight. He was as grand 
to look at as the others, and he was not 
afraid. When they slammed the door of 
the toril behind him, and left him staring 
at the wide, glaring yellow ring, it did 
not seem to make him afraid or angry, 
only amazed. A great wonder seemed 
swelling in his breast ; where was he ? 
what did it all mean ? He lifted his 
head and walked forward, looking up at 
the serried ranks of Christians gazing 
down at him. I think he had a poetic na- 
ture, as bulls go. He seemed to wonder, 
speculate, yearn to know the deeps of 
fate. When he got to the centre of the 
huge arena, he caught sight of a horse 
bestridden by a valiant picadore. Some 
faint stirring of his animal nature dis- 
pelled for the moment his wondering 
trance. Bulls kill horses ; that was in 
his blood. He ran forward, put down 
his head, gored the horse, tumbled the 
rider. He was not afraid, but it did 
not amuse him ; he turned away. They 

i73 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

dragged another horse before him which 
he did not rise to cordially, but finally 
they nagged him into tossing horse and 
rider into the air. The crowd did not 
approve him ; the picadores began to dig 
their long lances into him, the chulas to 
wave their cloaks before his bewildered 
eyes. Even this only made him furious 
for the moment. When they let him 
alone, he subsided into peace again ; he 
simply had no use for the horses ; he 
was not a coward, but he was pacific, 
large-natured. This did not please the 
people. The chulas and the picadores 
had all they could do to keep him to his 
bloody work. 

When the horses had been withdrawn 
and the chulas and the matadores closed 
around him, it was pitiful ; they could 
not call up any anger that was permanent. 
He would rush at them, tear their flags, 
and then turn away. Three times dur- 
ing his probation he shook himself clear 
of their persecution, and trotted around 

174 



IN THE SEVILLE BULL RING 

the vast space, and with a wonderful in- 
telligence stopped before the toril door 
and looked up to the crowd with a wist- 
ful appeal to be let out of this brutal 
field of blood. It was strange that he 
should know the toril door, the place is 
so huge, and the barrier so round and 
so monotonous. But again and again he 
came back and stood before it, the blood 
streaming from his wounds, the barbed 
banderillas shaking in his flesh as he ran. 
His look as he lifted his head to the 
crowd and stood imploring at the toril 
door will always trouble me. 

There was nothing that made his death 
to differ from the death of the others. 
There is a horrible monotony about their 
dying always. I mean in their death- 
throes. There are critical differences in 
the work of the matadores, of course; 
some give the fatal thrust more daintily, 
at which the crowd applaud. 

But always there is a sickening faint- 
ness that seems to overtake the poor 

175 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

victims a few seconds after the fatal 
thrust has been given ; they lie down 
breathing hard, but holding their heads 
high, facing their foe. Sometimes one 
will stagger to his feet again and make 
an impotent rush at the brilliant, smiling 
matadore with his knife hid in the crim- 
son cloth he flaunts. But fate has been 
"too many " for him. It is no use. He 
lies down again, a bloody froth oozing 
from his nostrils. There comes a shudder 
and a collapse, and your bull is dead. 

Well, when he is killed, the mules trot 
merrily in, shaking their gay bells and 
the red tassels with which they are be- 
decked, their white-bloused drivers run- 
ning behind them, and the dead bull is 
dragged off the field, as are the dead 
horses. These last look such pitiful 
shapes when the life is gone out of them. 
They are generally poor beasts to begin 
with, but the unknown attribute which 
we describe as life makes them such dif- 
ferent objects. In a moment, a rack of 

176 



IN THE SEVILLE BULL RING 

bones, a heap of hoofs and ribs. The 
bulls, too, look so poor and shapeless. 
What is life, after all? How much 
longer before the philosophers, who will 
not let us believe anything that we can- 
not understand, tell us what it is that 
goes out, the absence of which glazes 
in an instant the dead monster's eye, and 
dulls the gloss of his coat, and turns the 
glorious contour of his limbs into de- 
formity? We ought to know such a 
simple thing as that, and to understand 
it thoroughly, thoroughly, before we be- 
lieve it. 

There was a mare in the ring that day, 
even more of a failure than the bull of 
which I have spoken. She was a de- 
licately formed creature ; even in her 
wretched plight one could see that she 
was well-bred. She had the remains of 
beauty, but she was no longer beautiful, 
alas. The chief thing left that showed 
her good blood was an exquisite sen- 
sitiveness, a quivering apprehension of 

177 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

danger, intuitions that were as harrowing 
as experiences. It is possible that she 
had had experiences too ; she may have 
been a survival of yesterday's fight and 
have been wounded and patched up for 
to-day's ; but however that may be, she 
was wild with terror. Blindfolding did no 
good ; she knew everything that was com- 
ing to pass ; she was absolutely beyond 
control ; they could not drag her into 
place for the bull's attack. I have never 
seen anything more human and more 
harrowing than her terror. Two men 
pulled her forward by ropes, two others 
from behind prodded her on with lances. 
She vaulted, started aside, shuddered, 
eluded the on-coming bull many times. 
The allotted moments of butchery were 
waning, the people were angry; they 
cried "Altro! altro ! " not from tender- 
ness of heart, alas, but from a thirst for 
blood. So the poor frightened creature 
was withdrawn, and another and stupider 
was brought on, who was quickly dis- 

178 



IN THE SEVILLE BULL RING 

patched by the bull to the contentment 
of the multitude. 

I gave a sigh of relief ; the nervous, 
high-strung wreck of better days was 
safe, and would be turned out to die 
upon the hills, perhaps, in peace. I think 
I even said a prayer to that effect. But 
no. When the next bull was brought 
on, the poor, faded high-bred beauty was 
dragged out again. This time better 
preparations had been made, more ropes 
and more prods. The human intellect 
with brute force as an auxiliary was too 
much for mettle ; and amid cheers and 
hand-clapping the terrified creature was 
gored and tossed high in the air, falling 
lifeless on the tawny sand, dead once and 
for all, let us hope. 

Of the skill of the matadores one can- 
not say too much in praise. The hero 
on this occasion was Espartero. The 
two others, quite as skillful, perhaps, were 
Guerrita and Bombita. All three were 
the foremost men in their profession. 

179 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

Their nerve and their skill were as per- 
fect as their dress, their bearing, and their 
grace. 

Guerrita was rather my favorite ; he 
is a slender, well-made, perfectly propor- 
tioned man of thirty-five or forty, agile 
as a deer, and with a deliberate grace 
of movement that seems to redeem the 
bloody work he does from some of its 
horrors. His features are regular, his 
expression is thoughtful, his face clean- 
shaven like a priest's. One scarcely 
knows whether to admire him most when 
vaulting over a bull in mid-career, or 
planting to a hair's breadth the hidden 
knife in the furious creature's spine, or 
standing with his gorra de torero in his 
hand, calmly bowing to the vociferous 
and excited multitude crowding to look 
down at him. 

One of the dramatic moments at a bull- 
fight is when the matadore " pledges " the 
bull to the chief person present. On the 
first day of the fair the personage was 

1 80 



IN THE SEVILLE BULL RING 

the Comtesse de Paris, and to her Es- 
partero " pledged' ' the three bulls which 
came to his share to slaughter. He 
killed them all, a merveille, with one 
stab each, and there was great acclaim. 
It was said the Comtesse would surely 
send him " something very handsome." 
I hope she did, and that his family have 
it now to console themselves with, for in 
less than five weeks from that day he was 
instantly killed in the Madrid Ring. Peo- 
ple had assured me the whole thing was 
reduced to such a science that there was 
literally no danger ; that the courage of 
the matadores was a laughable fiction; 
that a man was in about as much danger 
from a bull as a telegraph operator is 
from the electric current he works with. 
This is a very comfortable thought as you 
watch a bull-fight, but it is about as near 
to truth as a good many other thoughts 
with which we solace ourselves. That 
Espartero, the great master of his craft, 
died weltering in his blood in the ring 

181 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

where he had had so many triumphs, 
proves the fallacy of such a theory. Your 
bull is an unknown quantity. You take 
your chance. One brute differs from an- 
other brute in fury. The wild creatures 
of the mountains cannot be trained to suit 
your game. You have to take them as 
they come. Some time ago a picadore 
was gored to death by a bull who went for 
him instead of the horse, the body of 
which always seems his objective point. 
It was found that the beast had some de- 
fect of vision, which caused him to plant 
his horns a foot or two higher than he 
meant to do. Therefore the matadore 
takes his chance, and it no doubt adds 
subtly to the pleasure of the crowd to 

know it is so grave a one. 

182 



XX 

AT THE SEVILLE FAIR 

There is a great family likeness in 
fairs. From the agricultural "county 
fair" on flat and hot Long Island, reek- 
ing with bullocks and sunburned country 
people, to a charity bazaar at Sherry's, 
where every one is fainting with fatigue 
and yawning with ennui, they are alike 
disappointing and tame. " Who pleasure 
follows, pleasure slays." The attempt to 
be amused is too bald, the machinery 
used too cheap ; the methods are amateur 
methods, and not skilled ones. Cer- 
tainly they have been at it generations 
enough in Seville to have made their 
fete an industry of the place, but they 
have not succeeded in taking it out of 
the family of fairs and making it some- 
thing sui generis. 

183 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

Seville is flat and hot, — they call it 
the frying-pan of Europe; but the fair 
occurs in April, when the fire may be 
said scarcely to have begun to crackle. 
The houses and the hotels are congested 
from garret to basement with black-eyed 
Spaniards, gentle and simple ; the trains 
are overflowing, the narrow streets are 
jammed with pedestrians, the fine equi- 
pages of noble Sevillians and the heavy- 
laden mules of the in-coming peasants 
jostle each other through the crooked 
thoroughfares. Certainly all this is bright 
and amusing. I have no objection to 
Seville in fair-time, but to Seville's fair 
as a fair I have a great objection. It is 
nothing that prices are doubled during 
the time, for trams and cabs and hotels ; 
if all this made people happy, one would 
not mind for once. Sixty francs a day 
for two people in one small room at the 
Hotel de Madrid would be well spent in 
promoting the happiness of a nation or 
furthering their welfare even for three 

184 



? 



AT THE SEVILLE FAIR 

days, if they were amused. But they are 
not. They come year after year, and they 
always think they are going to be amused, 
I am sure. The love of such pleasure 
seems inborn, and the belief in its attain- 
ment dies hard. 

The fair-grounds at Seville are of im- 
mense extent, — almost miles, I think. 
There are acres and acres of bullocks 
and sheep and horses, and this quarter, 
of course, smells very nasty, and is not 
picturesque, as there are no trees, but 
either, according to the weather, a great 
deal of stifling dust or trampled mud. 
There are several great avenues laid out, 
and actually built upon every year. One 
is a sort of mercantile quarter, where are 
booths and restaurants and shows. An- 
other is devoted to the children ; cheap 
toys of every kind are for sale, and hun- 
dreds of whistles and trumpets wail the 
disappointments of as many little bour- 
geois Spaniards. There is nothing else 
to be bought that I heard of, nothing 

185 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

characteristic except things to eat, and 
they are of a character you do not want 
to eat, and naturally cannot keep. 

The principal show of the place is the 
grand avenue where the high fashion of 
Seville elects to spend the afternoons and 
evenings of the three fair-days. Here 
are hundreds of what look like pasteboard 
houses painted yellow, without doors or 
glass in the windows, — decidedly pretty 
in design for the purpose. They vary in 
size, but are rather monotonous in color 
and form. Some of them have balconies, 
where pots of flowers stand and where 
vines have been hastily nailed up. Many 
of the entrances and the windows are 
draped with pretty chintzes, and the in- 
teriors are sometimes gracefully arranged 
with furniture brought out from the town, 
— pianos, lamps, clocks, vases of flowers, 
etc. It must be untold trouble. Con- 
tractors put up the booths, and take 
them down at the end of the fair and 
store them till the next year, but the fur- 

186 



AT THE SEVILLE FAIR 

niture seems to be brought by the family 
who leases or owns the booth. We drove 
through the grounds the day before the 
fair opened, and saw men and maid-ser- 
vants superintending the unloading of 
carts, and an occasional head of a family 
casting anxious looks around, and evi- 
dently not enjoying that part of it. 

All the booths are numbered; one 
walks along block after block of monot- 
onous edifices where nothing seems to 
be going on, people sitting about and 
looking bored, — no elan, no dash, no 
anything. Several large and handsome 
structures, all in the same style of archi- 
tecture and colored in the same manner, 
are put up or rented by the fashionable 
clubs of the city. These are quite the 
centres of gayety and fashion, they say. 
I did not see the gayety ; the fashion was 
probably incorporated in the persons of 
a few petits maitres who talked with 
languid voices to some smartly dressed 
but not beaming women on sofas. 

187 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

The floor of each booth is several feet 
above the level of the ground, so that 
the occupants are on a stage in full view 
of the masses who drive and walk past 
all day long, and in the evening crowd 
up to the very steps to look on at the 
" enjoyment " of their betters. The 
booth of the Infanta was in no sense 
more private than those of less impor- 
tant people. The publicity of the whole 
thing seemed to me odious, and the 
stereotyped machine-made houses took 
away all possibility of picturesqueness. 
I had fancied tents put up on a green 
field gay with flags and hangings, — An- 
dalusian, individual, characteristic ; dark- 
haired beauties in mantillas flitting from 
one to the other; Spanish lovers with 
lustrous eyes, touching the strings of 
guitar, mandolin, or zither; the sound 
of castanets half heard; the rhythm of 
half -seen dancers from within ; the scent 
of jasmine and rose filling the air; the 
soft glow of hanging lamps mixing with 

188 



AT THE SEVILLE FAIR 

the pale light of stars ; the moonbeams 
flickering through the trees. Seville, the 
home of dance and song! Aye de mi 
Sevillia ! One more illusion gone. I 
have been to the home of dance and 
song, and what have I seen ? 

Our visits in the day had been depress- 
ing, but we made light of that, thinking 
perhaps the evening view would do away 
with this impression. We all alighted 
from the tram, and entered what I must 
acknowledge was a magnificent avenue 
of lanterns. The street was very broad 
and of enormous length, and it was en- 
tirely arched by strings of lamps ; you 
walked under a canopy that glowed, 
and a multitude walked with you. But 
in such silence ! You heard the tramp 
of feet on the pavement as it is heard at 
St. Peter's on Good Friday after vespers, 
when there is no music, and of course 
no speech. A most decorous crowd it 
was. I admit I should have liked a little 
indecorum, — a street fight, even, to vary 

189 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

the monotony. The people were gen- 
erally of the lower and middle classes, — 
fathers carrying babies, women trudging 
on behind, lads marching sulkily along, 
looking neither to the right hand nor to 
the left. I do not know how the grand 
monde got to their booths ; but evi- 
dently not by this splendid path of light, 
which we thought the best thing at the 
fair. 

The peasants did not wear costumes ; 
the women had print skirts, and shawls, 
and handkerchiefs over their heads ; the 
men, the worst-made common coats and 
trousers. Too often the girls wore cheap 
and gaudy hats and jackets that might 
have been bought in Third Avenue or the 
Bowery : in the length and breadth of 
the place, not a white cap, not a bodice, 
not a sabot. Two or three black Canton 
crape shawls, embroidered richly in old 
rose or yellow, worn with an air of inher- 
itance by bare-headed peasant women, 
were the only suggestions of a costume 

190 



AT THE SEVILLE FAIR 

that I saw. Of course, the women of 
the better class wore mantillas, but you 
always count on the peasants for color 
and picturesqueness in a crowd. 

Well, this sad-faced multitude were 
only on their way to the fair. When 
they were actually there, perhaps they 
would wake up and be jocund. Not in 
the least. They never woke up or did 
anything but pace from end to end of 
the long avenues, looking as if their legs 
ached, and as if they wished that it were 
time to go home. I went drearily from 
one tent to another, and at last I resolved 
to stop and centre my powers of analysis 
upon one booth which seemed to me 
about an average example of its class. 
There was dancing going on, and a good 
many people were collected outside, look- 
ing in. So while the rest of the party 
moved along I sat down in a chair, for 
which a man promptly invited me to pay 
twenty centimes. Having satisfied his 
claims, I tried to indemnify myself by 

191 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

studying the Seville fair in an individual 
development. 

The scene in the booth before me was 
really pathetic. What an heroic attempt 
to be gay, to realize the traditions of the 
fair ! Around the sides of the room, on 
sofas and chairs, sat several elderly wo- 
men, whose well-worn, plain black silk 
gowns, thin hair, and awkward pose 
showed them to be no longer of a world 
where song and dance prevailed. It 
seemed a cruelty to bring them out of 
the obscure domesticity into which they 
fitted, and place them under this garish 
light. Some ungainly boys, compelled 
by the solemnity of the function, were 
wriggling uncomfortably on their chairs, 
and casting furtive glances out at the 
crowd. Two pretty young girls in deep 
mourning sat just by the entrance; they 
did not disguise their ennui, for not a 
cavalier of any kind had come near them. 
Before this inspiriting domestic group a 
dance was going on. At the piano was a 

192 



AT THE SEVILLE FAIR 

woman whose round and aged back only 
was presented to us, playing with vigor 
and spirit, and in excellent time, one of 
the Spanish dances. What vim, what 
determination, she put into it ! They 
should dance, their booth should be gay. 
Another, of heroic mould like herself, 
was dancing, — a woman of about thirty- 
five ; in her youth no doubt " a fine 
figger of a woman," but now, alas, rather 
stout, — and with her a somewhat pretty 
little girl of twelve in white muslin. The 
elder dancer wore a well-fitting gown of 
black satin and a white lace mantilla 
admirably put on, fastened with a red 
rose in her hair and three or four on her 
breast. She danced remarkably well, 
clapping her castanets with sharp pre- 
cision, moving with all the grace possible 
to such pronounced embonpoint, and 
catching the very spirit of the music. 
With eye and murmured admonition she 
kept her rather lax little partner up to 
her work. But it was such hard work, — 

J 93 



A CORNER OF SPAIN 

such swimming against the current of 
fate, of feeling, of years ! It was mis- 
placed valor, a magnificent charge against 
the inevitable. It was a storming of the 
fortress of Pleasure, which never has 
been and never can be carried. Dear 
lady, if the gates open to you of them- 
selves, go in and thank the gods. 

" I only know 't is fair and sweet, 
'T is wandering on enchanted ground 
With dizzy brow and tottering feet," — 

but all must be in the nature of a gift 
and not a conquest. I wanted to put 
my arms around that middle-aged dancer 
of the Malaguenas, to take the castanets 
out of her hand, and tell her to go and 
do something that would give her some 
enjoyment, and I yearned to escort back 
to shelter those poor old black silk gowns 
which looked so "out of it" under the 
electric light. I wanted, too, to turn 
the little boys adrift, and give them 
money to buy whistles and trumpets to 
make all the noise they lusted in the 

194 



AT THE SEVILLE FAIR 

humbler quarters of the fair. As to the 
two pretty girls in black, who sat like 
Sally Waters, "a-wishin' and a-waitin' 
for a young man," I longed to whisper 
to them to go home and sit in the chim- 
ney corner, — or whatever answers to the 
chimney-corner in Andalusian homes, — 
and to assure them that it was down in 
the book of Fate he would surely come 
to them there. 

I have never been more depressed by 
the mistaken efforts of my kind to be 
happy than I was that damp, warm night 
at Seville, sitting under the trees, and 
watching first the dancing in the booths, 
and then the crowd dragging past me 
as if it were Weary-Foot Common they 
were crossing, and not the land of Beulah. 

i95 



CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS, U. S. A. 
ELECTROTYPED AND PRINTED BY 
H. O. HOUGHTON AND CO. 



